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UK will partner with three new Women’s Rights Organisations in Kenya and South Africa to develop new preventative strategies.
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Prime Minister’s Special Representative on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict will commit UK to protecting women and girls at International Alliance in Colombia.
New measures designed to tackle online violence against women and girls are announced today at the start of this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
The project, called Safe Online Preventing Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) and to be backed by more than £27m of UK-government funding, will help to support survivors of online violence and abuse, gather data to strengthen our understanding of this emerging threat, and minimise women’s exposure to harmful content by working with national regulators.
85% of women globally have witnessed or experienced online abuse and violence, including harassment, stalking and hateful misogynistic content. Today’s announcement shows the UK is determined to work globally to counter this threat to women and girls.
Minister for Development Anneliese Dodds has also announced three new partnerships with women’s rights organisations today, to examine how media and technology can prevent violence against women and girls – rather than facilitate it.
CREAW in Kenya, Soul City Institute and Reach Digital Health in South Africa will work in partnership with the UK government’s What Works to Prevent Violence programme to scale-up approaches on the most effective ways to prevent violence against women and girls. Working closely with local women’s rights organisations, the programme will pioneer new violence prevention approaches and scale-up approaches proven to be effective in countries such as Uganda, Eswatini, Somalia and Pakistan.
Backed by £67.5 million, the programme represents the first global effort to systematically scale-up violence prevention efforts and is the largest investment by any single donor in preventing violence against women and girls globally.
This government is clear that violence against women and girls is unacceptable, with today’s announcements building on previous action taken to tackle this issue. The UK recently announced £5m of funding to tackle child marriage at the Violence Against Children conference in Colombia and published a new report examining the links between violence against women and climate change at COP29 in Baku.
Alongside our partners, the UK’s support to end violence against women globally has contributed to
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A 15% reduction in the global prevalence of child marriage over the last decade, averting 25 million marriages.
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Pioneering approaches that have successfully reduced rates of GBV in less than three years.
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Protecting over 160,000 girls under 14 from undergoing female genital mutilation in just one year.
The Minister of State for Women and Equalities and Minister of State for Development, Anneliese Dodds said
This government is committed to tackling the epidemic of misogyny and violence against women and girls, which destroys lives and scars communities.
This violence does not stop at our border – nor should our action to stop it.
Increasingly, online spaces are being used to perpetrate violence rather than prevent it- and so we need to work together to understand this abuse and what works to stop it.
Today, Lord Collins, in his first engagement since being appointed the Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict (PSVI) will also attend the International Alliance on PSVI Conference in Colombia.
He will commit the UK to work with partners to drive international action to tackle conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), which disproportionally affects women and girls around the world.
The International Alliance on PSVI was launched by the UK in 2023 and remains the only group focused specifically on strengthening international action to tackle CRSV and support survivors.
The Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict and Minister of State for Africa, Lord Collins said
There are more countries in the world today engaged in conflict than at any time since World War II and a 50% increase in incidences of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) globally in the last year.
As the Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, I am determined to drive forward the UK’s leadership on this issue, working with partners in Colombia and around the world to reduce conflict-related sexual violence, support survivors and bring perpetrators to justice.
Notes for editors
- International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is taking place on 25 November 2024.
- 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is taking place between 25 November – 10 December 2024.
- The What Works to Prevent Violence Impact at Scale programme is a £67.5 million programme working to pioneer and scale-up effective approaches to ending GBV. The first phase of the programme showed that we can reduce violence in homes, schools, and communities by 50% in under 3 years. The programme has recently awarded three new grants to women’s rights organisations
- To CREAW in Kenya, in order to pioneer the use of media in preventing violence.
- To Soul City Institute in South Africa, to pioneer the use of mass media in preventing violence.
- To Reach Digital Health in South Africa, to pioneer the use of technology such as chatbots in preventing violence.
- Further information on the £5m funding to help tackle child marriage can be found here
- A link to the report on climate change and gender-based violence can be found here
