A/HRC/17/23 violence and impeded the further development of effective responses and strategies. Nevertheless, efforts to set up reliable systems to collect accurate information on violence against women should not be overlooked, since it is part of every State’s obligation to address violence against women.15 65. The lack of consistent State funding for initiatives and policies aimed at preventing violence against women is also problematic. It prevents sustainable implementation of programmes and activities over time and greatly affects the impact policies and legislative measures will have on effectively contributing to preventing violence against women. Evaluation and monitoring measures are also greatly affected by lack of funding. Yet project-driven funding is often favoured by donors, thereby greatly limiting the sustainability and viability of practices over time. 66. It is also very difficult to generalize about good practices at the international level. In a recent publication, OSCE noted that “despite attempts to identify best practices so that they can be studied and replicated, there are no agreed-upon principles or criteria of what constitutes such practices”.16 Both the standards of evaluation and specific local context in which the practice was used play an important role. Already in 2006, the Secretary-General noted that “what works well is influenced by the form of the State, its commitment to women’s equality, its relationship with NGOs and civil society and the resources it has to draw on” (A/61/122/Add.1 and Corr.1, para. 286). 67. Finally, the replies showed a lack of focus of prevention initiatives on the underlying causes of violence against women. The role of economic power and structures in reinforcing gender inequalities which make women more vulnerable to violence, and poor, migrant, indigenous, young and elderly women particularly vulnerable, seemed to be overlooked. Since primary prevention essentially “relies on identifying the ‘upstream’ determinants and then taking action to address these”,17 it seems of the utmost importance that legislation, policy and operational measures address underlying causes, such as gender inequality and the feminization of poverty. Moreover, the causes of violence need to be accurately known to respond to that violence and end it in the long term. It seems there is a lack of research on the economic, political and social determinants of violence against women. A few initiatives on economic empowerment or political participation of women were mentioned by the respondents, but most of these were lacking detailed explanations on the precise measures taken and assessment of these measures’ impact on violence against women. 15 16 17 See Jamila Seftaoui (ed.), Bringing Security Home: Combating Violence Against Women in the OSCE Region. A Compilation of Good Practices (Vienna, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2009), p. 19. Ibid. WHO, Preventing (note 10 above), p. 34. 17