UNIFEM is the women‘s fund at the United Nations. Established in 1976, it provides financial and technical assistance to innovative approaches aimed at fostering women‘s empowerment and gender equality. Through its work in more than 100 countries, UNIFEM focuses its activities on the following strategic goals:
- Reducing women‘s poverty and exclusion;
- Ending violence against women;
- Reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls;
- Supporting women‘s leadership in governance and post-conflict reconstruction.
URL: www.unifem.org
UNIFEM Arab States Regional Office was established in Amman in 1994, as one of 15 regional offices of UNIFEM worldwide. Today UNIFEM Arab States Regional Office‘s mandate encompasses 17 Arab countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, occupied Palestinian territory, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria.
The work of the UNIFEM Arab States Regional Office focuses on three major issues reflecting the regional and national contexts in Arab areas:
- Strengthening women’s economic rights and empowering women to enjoy secure livelihoods.
- Supporting institutional capacity in gender planning and engendering governance.
- Promoting women’s human rights to eliminate all forms of violence against women.
URL: www.unifem.org.jo
UNIFEM office in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) was established in 1997. Under the good governance project, UNIFEM focused on building the capacity of national women‘s institutions, resulting in the development of the National Strategy for the Advancement of Palestinian Women, based on a policy-level (top-down) approach. In 2001, UNIFEM reassessed its programmes and decided to link policy-level initiatives with a strong grassroots initiative aimed at making Palestinian women’s voices heard.
To this end, UNIFEM has given priority to its work with women in marginalized communities of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, with focus on rural women, who live in isolation and face increasing difficulties in accessing services, information and resources.
Major programmes implemented by UNIFEM in OPT:
1. Rural Women Empowerment Programme "Sabaya": For more details, please see http://www.sabaya.org/ and http://www.unifem.org.jo/pages/project.aspx?pid=702
2. 2005 Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) project
This project was funded by the Government of Norway and covered the following activities:
- Access to Counselling Services for Palestinian women, including :
- Psychosocial counselling.
- Legal counselling
- Academic counselling.
( For more details, please see http://www.unifem.org.jo/pages/project.aspx?pid=696
- Development of a database on services.
3. 2006 Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) projects, which include:
4. Outreach through Film: raising women’s awareness about their rights through film screenings
for more details, please see: http://www.unifem.org.jo/pages/project.aspx?pid=717
5. Women‘s Human Rights Programme, which includes:
6. HIV/AIDS Programme:
- Producing a study on HIV/AIDS awareness among Palestinian women and young girls, conducted in partnership with the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association. for more details, please see http://www.unifem.org.jo/pages/project.aspx?pid=713
- Conducting a campaign that aims at raising the awareness of Palestinians on gender and HIV/AIDS related issues, in order to prevent the spread of the epidemic and to reduce the social stigma towards infected people. for more details, please see http://www.unifem.org.jo/pages/project.aspx?pid=698
