Recommendation 2

HM Government Acknowledged

The Government remains committed to eliminating all forms of gender-based violence (GBV). This is a core part of this Government’s mission and of Global Britain’s role as a force for good in the world. We are proud that the UK is recognised as a global leader in tackling GBV, including pioneering approaches through our What Works to Prevent Violence programme, which have shown that reductions in violence of around 50% are possible over programmatic timeframes. 4 Fifth Special Report of Session 2019–21 As the Foreign Secretary set out at UNGA on 1 October, the UK is working with our international partners to ensure that gender equality is central to the COVID-19 recovery. We have reoriented FCDO programmes so that women and girls can continue to access support. For example, in Kenya, the UK is supporting the State Department for Gender to increase the capacity of the national helpline and support a coordinated approach to services for survivors. In Nepal, we are ensuring that women and girls can access support by financing Women and Children Service Centres across the country. to address the “shadow pandemic” of GBV—for example providing £10 million to the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), which includes funding to scale up reporting, protection and support services for women and children affected by violence. In September 2020, we announced new funding of £1 million to the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women’s COVID-19 Crisis Response Window, on top of our existing £21 million contribution. We are ensuring that inclusion is built into the COVID-19 response and recovery to prioritise the needs of vulnerable groups, including women with disabilities, who are two to four times more likely to experience intimate partner violence. For example, our flagship Disability Inclusive Development Programme supports adapted and new interventions to produce evidence about effective ways of ensuring that people with disabilities are not excluded from humanitarian and health responses. We agree that action against GBV is more important now than ever. That is why we are building on the success of What Works Phase 1 with a ground-breaking successor— What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale. This is the first ever global programme to systematically scale up proven approaches to prevent GBV worldwide. The UK also continues to lead the world in our support to the Africa-led movement to end female genital mutilation (FGM), including through our current five-year programme which commenced in 2019. Since 2013, UK aid has helped over 10,000 communities pledge to abandon FGM. The UK is further stepping up our international leadership on this agenda. We are co- leading the new Generation Equality Global Action Coalition on GBV with Kenya, Uruguay, Iceland and other global partners. We are using this platform to catalyse collective action and deliver concrete results over the next five years. This has included initiating a joint statement on GBV and COVID-19 at UNGA in 2020. The Foreign Secretary made clear at UNGA that the UK will use the Action Coalition to “tackle the root causes of violence, including using education to stop violence before it starts”. The UK is playing a leading global role in efforts to end violence, abuse and exploitation of children. We are supporting global partners, including the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children, to pivot their technical support, programmes and advocacy to the COVID-19 response. This includes the UK’s £5 million contribution to End Violence’s Safe to Learn initiative, which is focusing on keeping children safe in the remote learning environment. We will use our role as co-leader of the Action Coalition on GBV to strengthen the links between these agendas, and to drive action to end GBV in schools and educational institutions and harness the transformative potential of education to support equitable relationships and non-violence from a young age. We will continue the UK’s global leadership on preventing sexual violence in conflict, putting survivors at the heart of our work—including collaborating with our Preventing Fifth Special Report of Session 2019–21 5 Sexual Violence in Conflict Survivor Champions, Nadine Tunasi and Kolbassia Haoussou. In 2020, we announced £1.3 million for the Global Survivors Fund, launched by Nadia Murad and her fellow Nobel Laureate Dr Denis Mukwege, to provide redress for victims of conflict-related sexual violence. We recently launched a first draft of the Murad Code, a global code of conduct to ensure that investigation into conflict related sexual violence is safer, more ethical, and more effective. We also launched the Declaration of Humanity, which unites multiple faiths to call for the prevention of sexual violence in conflict and denounces the stigma faced by survivors. Safeguarding against sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment (SEAH) in the aid sector is a priority for FCDO and we set out our vision in