A/HRC/29/3 E/CN.6/2015/6 5. The Trust Fund focuses its funding on three priority programme areas: preventing violence against women and girls; expanding survivors ’ access to support services; and strengthening the implementation of laws, policies and action plans. The Trust Fund has also created three special Thematic Windows to support global learning initiatives. Each of the Windows groups together grantees working on similar types of interventions in the areas of: violence against women in conflict, post-conflict and transitional settings; the intersection between HIV/AIDS and violence against women and girls; and violence against adolescent girls. In addition to giving sustained visibility to these issues, the Thematic Windows help to identify good and promising practices and generate knowledge about effective methods of and approaches to eliminating violence against women and girls. 6. The present report, prepared for the fifty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women and the twenty-ninth session of the Human Rights Council, describes the impact and achievements of the Trust Fund in 2014. II. Context 7. The World Health Organization estimates that one in three women worldwide will experience either physical or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in her lifetime. 2 The most common form of violence experienced by women is intimate partner violence; a global study on homicide found that almost half of female homicide victims are killed by members of their family or intimate partners, whereas the equivalent figure for male victims is just over one fifth. 3 Current economic crises have exacerbated women’s economic disadvantage and subsequent cutbacks in social spending on health and education have increased women’s risk of exploitation and violence (see A/HRC/26/39). 8. The Trust Fund recognizes that violence against women and girls can often be directly linked to their lack of economic empowerment and that precarious and disadvantaged economic situation can further facilitate women ’s exploitation or abuse by partners, relatives, employers, and others in their communities. It can also prevent women and girls from escaping violence and building new lives for themselves and their families. To truly transform the existing social beliefs, practices and cultural models that fuel violence, it is necessary to address and bring to an end the multiple and interconnected disadvantages, inclu ding all forms of discrimination and exclusion that girls and women experience worldwide. 9. The year 2015 will be a critical juncture for future efforts to end violence against women and girls. Discussions about the post-2015 development agenda, including the sustainable development goals, and debates surrounding the upcoming twentieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), will provide a pivotal opportunity to reposition the issue of violence against women and girls and ensure that it is placed at the centre of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. In this context, the United Nations Trust Fund is more determined than ever to support the __________________ 2 3 14-67252 World Health Organization, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, South African Medical Research Council, Global and Regional Estimates of Violence against Women: Prevalence and Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-partner Sexual Violence (Geneva, World Health Organization, 2013). Global Study on Homicide 2013 (United Nations publication, Sales No. 14.IV.1). 3/13