“The World Bank is ramping up its efforts for global policymakers to address gender-based violence [GBV], proposing an agenda for improving the status of women and directing more research toward the economic and social costs of violence,” TrustLaw reports. “The World Bank plans to hold a panel discussion on gender violence in South Asia when finance ministers gather in Washington for the World Bank’s spring meetings in April as a way to highlight the need to target resources toward the issue,” the news service adds.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim “in a Huffington Post blog outlined three priority areas — enforcing laws to jail rapists and those who abuse women; significantly increasing women’s political voice; and ensuring that women have basic freedoms and equality under the law,” TrustLaw notes (Dawson, 2/28). “One way for us to help is to collect better data that measure equality for women and girls. We have precious little data, for instance, on women’s earnings, property ownership, and political voice,” Kim writes in the “World” blog, adding, “Right now, we’re improving data collection in 10 countries on equality issues; we’ll look at 10 additional countries after that, and still more after those 20” (2/27).