Violence Against Women Data and Research

Details

Mission and objectives

UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. Our mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. UNFPA’s goal is to achieve universal access to sexual and reproductive health, realize reproductive rights, and reduce maternal mortality to accelerate progress on the ICPD agenda, to improve the lives of adolescents and youth, and women, enabled by population dynamics, human rights, and gender equality. In 2018, UNFPA launched efforts to achieve three transformative results, ambitions that promise to change the world for every man, woman and young person: 1.) Ending unmet need for family planning 2.) Ending preventable maternal death 3.) Ending gender-based violence and harmful practises UNFPA recognizes that innovation is a key accelerator to achieve these results. UNFPA will harness innovation to meet tomorrow’s challenges and boost its impact, especially in addressing furthest behind populations, and leverage opportunities, social capital, funding and technology by (a) strengthening the corporate innovation architecture and capabilities, (b) scaling up innovations that have proven to be effective and impactful, (c) forming new partnerships and connecting with relevant innovation ecosystems, (d) strengthening and leveraging financing for innovation, and (e) expanding communities and culture for innovation.

Context

UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. UNFPA expands choices and possibilities for women and young people to lead healthy and productive lives. UNFPA’s strategic plan (2022-2025), focuses on three transformative results: to end preventable maternal deaths; end unmet need for family planning; and end gender-based violence and harmful practices, Violence against women is a major human rights violation and a global public health concern of pandemic proportions. An estimated 736 million women - almost 1 in 3 - have been subjected to intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence or both at least once in their life (30% of women aged 15 and older). In 2011, the United Nations Statistical Commission adopted nine standard indicators for measuring VAW. And with the adoption by Member States of Target 5.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), demand for VAW prevalence data has only increased. Against this backdrop, there is a growing call for reliable and comparable prevalence data on VAW. However, there remains a persistent lack of quality data on the prevalence of Violence against Women (VAW), due to inadequate technical capacity to safely and ethically collect VAW data. Reliable, comparable data on VAW prevalence are essential to inform and to monitor effective prevention and response efforts and are also an essential part of a comprehensive approach to ending all forms of violence against women and girls. In light of the increasing demand for more accurate, reliable and comparable VAW prevalence data, UNFPA, in partnership with the University of Melbourne and the Australian National Research Organization for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) launched the kNOwVAWdata initiative in Asia-Pacific in 2016 with the support of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The kNOwVAWdata initiative provides technical support and capacity building, enabling countries to undertake VAW prevalence studies in an ethical and scientifically robust way. Since 2020, the Gender Human Rights Branch (GHRB), Technical Division, HQ has worked to facilitate scale up of the initiative into an addition 5 regions including Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Arab States, Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, building a global pool of graduates from the kNOwVAWdata course to support increased capacity to ensure safe and ethical VAW data collection and analysis. This scale up has been achieved through a twinning modality whereby research institutes and Universities globally work in close partnership with UNFPA and the University of Melbourne to ensure a process of course adaptation and translation as well as mentoring to ensure maintenance of quality programme delivery. In the case of the Arab States, the American University in Cairo is supporting the translation and contextualization of the global curricula and the delivery of the training in the Arab region.

Task description

● Support the coordination for expansion and roll out the kNOwVAW data initiative in 6 regions including reviewing adaptation of curricula and addition of new modules; ● Support for adaptation and implementation of the kNOwVAWdata communications plan; ● Support the coordination of the kNOwVAW data quarterly reference group meeting; ● Contribute to building a kNOwVAW data global website and coordinate the kNOwVAW data internal microsite and community of practice; ● Support the transfer of the kNOwVAW data training curricula to the UNSSC’s Moodle platform in English and Arabic; ● Support the global rebranding of the kNOwVAW data initiative; ● Provide technical contributions to UNFPA’s strategic positioning, advocacy, and knowledge exchange on VAW data; ● Coordinate the partnership with the American University in Cairo; ● Support the planning of the first kNOwVAW data training in Arabic; ● Produce a mapping of upcoming VAW data surveys in the Arab States Region and prepare a mentoring plan with the University of Melbourne and the American University in Cairo to support those surveys; ● Contribute to knowledge products, policy briefs, briefing notes, academic research papers and reports on VAW data (including literature reviews, assist in the synthesis of existing research and gather secondary data related to GBV and VAW); ● Assist in the preparation of research proposals and grant applications. ● Contribute to the production and maintenance of data visualizations, reports, and presentations. ● Identify opportunities and enable South-South cooperation as a modality for capacity building, and promote and support knowledge exchange, communications and advocacy for VAW data at national, regional and global levels, including mapping the intersections with the Center of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls. ● Support webinars, internal communications and quarterly newsletters ● Provide analysis of trends and dynamics with regard to GBV achievements, as well as inform on implications of changes in the external environment which will impact the same and can be used to inform alliance building and resource mobilization. ● Partake in the preparation of learning sessions and meetings for regional office/ Branch staff, and related skill development initiatives. ● Support to editing and formatting of documents and assist with administrative duties including correspondence to internal and external partners. ● Coordinate with UNFPA Country Offices to identify opportunities for the application/implementation of dedicated VAW prevalence surveys, including in large program settings. ● Contribute to secondary analysis of gender and SRH-related topics based on representative survey datasets (i.e. MICS, DHS and others). ● Perform other duties as required.