A/HRC/17/23 violence against women. For instance, the use of new technologies was reported as a good way to encourage the reporting of violence and to avoid re-victimization, including by Slovenia (where an anonymous domestic violence e-report system was set up) and Singapore (where victims who fear direct confrontation with perpetrators can use a remote videoconferencing system to apply for a protection order or to testify at case hearings in Family Courts). 56. Femmes Solidaires has a project to mentor non-excised girls in a region in Ethiopia and support the girls’ families against social pressure, including by helping them to send the girls to school. The last evaluation trip, which took place in November 2010, coincided with the first baby delivery by a non-excised young woman in the community. The delivery showed the benefits of the absence of excision and contributed to refuting prejudices against non-excised women. 57. The World Food Programme underlined that food assistance can be used as a direct protection tool. Extreme poverty often forces women and girls to resort to negative survival mechanisms, including transactional sex, to feed themselves and their children, and food assistance can prevent such practices and decrease the related risk of exposure to violence. Using food rations as an incentive to keep girls in school also reduces their exposure to violence, by protecting them from early marriage and pregnancies. 58. Human Rights Watch referred to the Intervention with Microfinance for AIDS and Gender Equity (IMAGE) programme, a trial intervention that combined microfinance support with training sessions on gender, HIV/AIDS and intimate partner violence, targeting women living in poor rural areas in South Africa. The programme also encouraged wider community participation and the involvement of men and boys. It was reported, two years after completing the programme, that participants had experienced 55 per cent fewer acts of violence by their intimate partner in the previous 12 months. The IMAGE project was qualified as “one of the most rigorously evaluated and successful microfinance and women’s empowerment programmes to date” by the World Health Organization.10 III. Challenges to the prevention of violence against women 59. An analysis of submissions showed that preventing violence against women requires a spectrum of strategies accompanied by political and financial commitments, at all levels of the State and involving a large range of actors and stakeholders. Submissions also clearly showed increased awareness about the need to prevent and combat violence against women. Some of the responses clearly related violence against women to discrimination against women and linked the struggle against violence against women to efforts to promote gender equality. In many States a legal framework to protect women from violence, and to discourage and punish perpetrators, is in place. However, such frameworks are not always comprehensive, adequate and accessible to women, and their prevention aspects, if they have any, are not clearly emphasized. Legislation is also often not systematically and properly implemented. 60. The responses also referred to a proliferation of specific institutional entities in many States which have contributed to the establishment of national action plans and initiatives to combat and prevent violence against women. However, the status and decision-making power of such entities is not always clear and issues regarding their funding not acknowledged. Nevertheless, coordination across the State and with other 10 World Health Organization, Preventing Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence against Women: Taking Action and Generating Evidence (Geneva, 2010), p. 48 15