Addressing violence against women and achieving the Millennium Development Goals
Recommendations
MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
1. Programmes to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger should be designed specifically to promote economic participation and independence of women in ways that do not expose them to increased violence.
2. Efforts to reduce poverty and hunger should be allied with efforts to safeguard female migrants, and to reduce trafficking of women and girls.
3. Humanitarian relief programmes should be designed to protect women and girls in situations of war and displacement, and to ensure that their basic needs are met.
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education
4. Policies and programmes aimed at universal primary education should promote education for girls and women as a means of empowering and protecting them, and achieving gender equality in society.
5. Educational programmes should include measures that enable girls and women to benefit from their increased educational level without fear of violence.
6. Social and educational policies should seek to eliminate harmful gender norms that devalue the education of girls, together with practices such as child labour and early marriage.
7. Educational authorities must ensure that schools are safe places for all students, with special attention to the security of girls.
MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women.
8. The attainment of MDG 3 will require a comprehensive approach to overcome not only violence against women, but also gender-based discrimination in laws and policies, and deeply-embedded social and cultural norms that perpetuate gender inequality.
9. Efforts to empower women must address current norms and traditional social customs that legitimize violence against them, as well as legislation and law enforcement that discriminate against them.
10. Initiatives to promote gender equality must deal openly and vigorously with the issue of partner violence, because women will never be equal in their public lives until they are equal at home.
11. Governments should ensure that statistics on violence against women, including on prosecution and conviction rates, are regularly collected and disseminated, and that interventions to address violence are properly evaluated.
MDG 4: Reduce child mortality
12. Efforts to reduce child mortality must include efforts to eradicate female infanticide and discrimination against girls. Such efforts must also address underlying harmful gender norms and biases.
13. Efforts to reduce infant and child mortality should include measures to reduce partner-violence against women, and to support women’s right to choose when and whether they want to have children.
14. To better monitor gender-based child mortality, all statistics collected on the health of under-5-yearolds should be disaggregated by sex and age.
MDG 5: Improve maternal health
15. Efforts to improve maternal health should include measures to reduce partner-violence against women.
16. Providers of reproductive health care should be trained to recognize signs of violence against women, and referral systems should be put in place to ensure that appropriate care, follow-up and support services are available.
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
17. National HIV prevention strategies should include components that aim to reduce violence against women, challenge social norms that condone such violence and empower women and girls to protect themselves against unwanted or forced sex.
18. HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns should inform the public about the relationship between violence against women and HIV/AIDS, and the HIV-related health risks of harmful traditional and formal practices.
19. AIDS treatment initiatives should address intimate-partner violence as an obstacle to both testing and treatment, and ensure confidentiality and support for women who seek either.
MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
20. Advocacy for sustainable development should emphasize its importance in preventing violent conflict, thereby protecting non-combatant women and children.
21. Efforts to provide sustainable access to drinking-water and fuel should take into account the safety needs of women, both by reducing the distances they have to travel and increasing their security as they make the journey.
22. Efforts to improve the lives of slum dwellers should include interventions to reduce the risk of violence against women through designs and services that enhance security in public places.
MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development
23. Development strategies should promote women’s ability to participate as full social, economic and political partners, unrestricted by harmful gender norms and violence.
24.Women must have increased and guaranteed access to decision-making structures and to political participation. These structures must be transformed to allow women’s participation to have an impact, and more priority must be given to ensuring that issues such as gender related violence and harmful gender norms receive the attention and resources they deserve.
25. Bodies with decision-making or executive responsibilities in the field of development should specifically include gender equality as a central goal for activities and involve representatives of women's groups, and if necessary this should be a condition for external funding.
26. Policies and programmes aimed at increasing access to new technologies should be designed with provision to ensure that women can safely access and benefit from the new technological developments.