UNIFEM is the women's fund at the United Nations. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programs and strategies to foster women's empowerment and gender equality. Placing the advancement of women's human rights at the center of all of its efforts, UNIFEM focuses its activities on four strategic areas:

Reducing women's poverty and exclusion;
Ending violence against women;
Halting the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls;
Supporting women?s leadership in governance and post-conflict reconstruction.
To pursue these goals, UNIFEM is active in all regions and at different levels. UNIFEM works with countries to formulate and implement laws and policies to eliminate gender discrimination and promote gender equality in such areas as land and inheritance rights, decent work for women and ending violence against women. UNIFEM also aims to transform institutions to make them more accountable to gender equality and women's rights, to strengthen the capacity and voice of women's rights advocates, and to change harmful and discriminatory practices in society.

Areas of Impact


Europe & CIS: Georgia. Women in the Southern Caucasus continued to work on building peace, step by step, with the support of UNIFEM's program to promote reconciliation in the region. In Abkhazia, Georgia, the Gali Women's Peace Council was established by women who returned home after having been internally displaced. Committed to fostering trust and understanding between Georgians and Abkhaz, the Peace Council brought together women from both ethnic groups in a series of meetings. the first of their kind in the country.

Asia/Pacific: Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Somalia. When the tsunami hit in December 2004, UNIFEM reacted immediately. Within days of the disaster, UNIFEM Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer visited the particularly hard-hit Indonesian province of Aceh and developed an approach that puts women at the heart of the relief and reconstruction efforts. Since then, UNIFEM has worked in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Somalia to assist women, in particular those heading households and widows, in restoring their livelihoods and to provide protection in a situation that left women and girls particularly vulnerable. In Aceh, UNIFEM brought together religious leaders, Shari, a courts, banks and women's organizations to call attention to women's land and property rights, a crucial issue in the context of resettlement after the tsunami.

Africa: Rwanda. To feed a gender perspective into the International Conference on Peace, Security, Democracy and Development in the Great Lakes Region in 2004, UNIFEM supported women to convene in Kigali, Rwanda and develop a common agenda. The Kigali Declaration spells out women's demands, such as measures to end impunity, in particular with regard to rape and violence against women, accelerated ratification of the African Union Protocol on Women's Rights, and the inclusion of women ex-combatants into reintegration and rehabilitation processes. Prior to this regional meeting, UNIFEM worked closely with women in all nine Great Lakes core countries to ensure that national perspectives would be incorporated into a broader regional vision.

Arab States: Afghanistan. Despite legal guarantees of gender equality, women in Afghanistan are frequently discriminated against in courts of law. Addressing this issue, UNIFEM facilitated the inclusion of gender justice in training for the Afghan judiciary, collaborating with UNICEF, the International Development Law Organization and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science. To raise public awareness on women's human rights, UNIFEM helped establish the Afghan Women Journalists Forum in support of the 300 women journalists estimated to work throughout the country. In addition, a nationally broadcast town meeting ahead of the 2004 elections in Afghanistan featured 150 journalists and women activists in discussion with
presidential candidates.

Europe & CIS: Kosovo. The Provisional Institutions of Self-Government in Kosovo adopted a Gender Equality Action Plan in 2004 that was developed with support from UNIFEM. Input came from women and men representing all sectors of society and all ethnic groups. The process of hammering out the plan generated lively debates and drew considerable media attention that helped to mobilize support. As the first major steps towards the plan's implementation, an Interministerial Group for Gender Equality was established and a Gender Equality Law passed.

Latin America: Mexico. To ensure that the needs of indigenous women are properly reflected in programs to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, UNIFEM brought together indigenous women from Central America and UN agencies in Mexico in 2004 to develop a common strategy. Since maternal mortality rates are particularly high throughout indigenous communities, the women called for the improvement of health care, in line with Goal 5. In order to achieve environmental sustainability, as outlined in Goal 7, they further expressed the need to ensure that indigenous women have the right to own land and property. In addition, the lack of reliable multi-ethnic statistics was identified as a priority to underpin work on the MDGs, an issue that will be addressed through the interagency process that was developed as a result of the UNIFEM-initiated strategy meeting.

Africa: Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Coalition of Women against Violence in the province of Kindu Maniema, Democratic Republic of the Congo, was formed as a result of training on women's human rights that UNIFEM facilitated together with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Coalition is lobbying for assistance to victims of violence and got an immediate response from the provincial Governor, who offered to provide a space where the women can gather and receive counseling.

Europe & CIS: Croatia. In Croatia, 2,800 teenage girls and boys participated in role-plays, lectures and group discussions aimed at combating violence in teen dating. A manual was developed targeted at educators and widely disseminated at schools and youth clubs, in addition to a web site for broader outreach. The successful initiative, carried out by the Croatian Centre for Education and Counseling of Women and supported through the UNIFEM Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women, has resulted in the commitment from local governments to support six schools in implementing teen dating violence prevention programs.

Latin America: Brazil. In Brazil, UNIFEM joined forces with the private sector to combat violence against women. In collaboration with Full Jazz Comunidade, a woman-owned advertising agency, a nationwide publicity campaign was developed under the slogan "Bem Querer Mulher" (Caring for Women) and launched through television, radio and print media on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Donations received from the private sector as a result of the campaign will be used to establish a UNIFEM-managed national trust fund to address violence against women in Brazil.


A Glimpse into the Conflict:
Mother of seven in Kalma IDP Camp (over 95,000 residents), seven miles northeast of Nyala, Darfur. She is from a village named Hattara where the Sudanese government launched a 3-day attack. Her husband was killed by a bomb. Women were raped, women and children were taken captive, and the village was burned. Bodies were left unburied as survivors escaped on foot. She and her children walked three days to reach the Kalma camp. Her 4-year-old daughter died of thirst on the way. The camp was attacked again on December 13, 2004. Two NGO workers were killed on the same day en route to Kalma, leading this organization to withdraw from the camp.

The unsettled conflict in Darfur continues to disrupt and threaten the lives of millions of Sudanese. Nearly two million people are displaced and tens of thousands have been killed in the western Sudanese province. Arab militiamen called janjaweed are accused of ethnic cleansing in Darfur and are now crossing the border to attack Sudanese civilians in neighboring Chad, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.