U.N. News: ‘Huge’ stakes, ‘daunting’ job to tackle gender-based violence, UNICEF chief tells ground-breaking conference
“One-in-three girls or women will experience physical or sexual violence in her lifetime, and ‘the risk multiplies’ during a conflict or natural disaster, the executive director of UNICEF told delegates attending the first-ever ‘Ending Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Humanitarian Crises Conference’ on Friday, in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. In a ground-breaking collaboration, the governments of Norway, Iraq, Somalia, [and] the United Arab Emirates (UAE), together with U.N. agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), is taking on the global SGBV challenge. The conference yielded a total of $363 million in pledges from 21 countries for 2019, 2020, and beyond, including $226.2 million to be spent on priorities this year alone…” (5/24).