The World Health Organization (WHO), together with UN Women, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the United Nations Development Programme launched the RESPECT Women website, a new online one-stop platform that aims to drive concrete actions – in policies and programmes - to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls.
“Violence against women and girls remains an immense crisis for rights and health for millions of women and girls around the world,”
“Governments need to ‘walk the talk’ in investing in evidence-based resources for violence prevention and response, while advancing gender equality. This new platform aims to support this process," said Dr Pascale Allotey, Director of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research at WHO, and head of the UN Special Programme on Human Reproduction (HRP).
You can find more information by visiting the WHO news story here. The RESPECT Women website is here - https://respect-prevent-vaw.org/
Confronting Global Violence Against Women
Globally almost 1 in 3 women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, mostly by an intimate partner - a stark reminder of the scale of gender inequality and discrimination against women and pressing need to address violence against women as worldwide public health, gender equality and human rights priority.
The website was launched during the Women Deliver Conference in Kigali, Rwanda, which brings together over 6,000 delegates focused on advancing gender equality and the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls.
The RESPECT website is user-friendly, interactive platform providing practical guidance to implement the RESPECT women framework’s seven evidence-based strategies to address violence against women and girls, with step-by-step guidance, examples of successful programmes, and training and multimedia materials for advocacy.
Women Deliver 2023 coincides with the mid-way point since the Generation Equality Forum appointed WHO and UN Women as co-leads of the Action Coalition for ending gender-based violence, which continues to affect millions of women and girls around the world – with devastating health impacts. The new RESPECT women website contributes towards delivering the Action Coalition’s commitments for violence prevention.
For national or regional examples of the RESPECT framework in action, visit the country program examples.
For national and regional data about violence against women, visit WHO’s Global Database on Prevalence of Violence against Women and VAW Prevalence Estimates
For more information, please contact: Deborah Walter: dwalter@who.in