A/HRC/41/3 E/CN.6/2019/7 32. In the second year of the special funding window, the tr ust fund awarded $2.5 million to the five new projects relating to this area. Projects in this special window, which began implementation in 2018, include the women -led organization Fundación Centro de Derechos Sociales de la Persona Migrante, which is usi ng a small grant from the trust fund to address violence against women and girls who have entered Costa Rica from neighbouring Nicaragua. The project is aimed at providing women and girls from Nicaragua with information about their rights and referring them to specialized services and networks for financial and psychological support. In Kenya, a project implemented by the Refugee Consortium of Kenya, a woman -led organization, is working with Somali refugees in the Nairobi and Garissa areas, many of whom have been there for almost two decades, to improve the access of the survivors to justice. In the State of Palestine, the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee will implement a project in six communities in area C of the West Bank, focusing primarily on women and girls who are displaced or at risk of being displaced. The project is aimed at addressing the gaps that hinder the access of at -risk women to justice. 33. In September, the trust fund held a five-day knowledge-exchange workshop in Amman, involving eight current and new grantees working on ending violence against women and girls in humanitarian contexts. The event provided an opportunity for grantees to obtain access to training to respond to programmatic and operational gaps in capacity, exchange learning and knowledge and document knowledge in a format that can be used for both internal and external purposes. Following a training needs assessment, the trust fund identified the Sphere Training Package as a course suited to the needs of this cohort. Sphere is aimed at improving the quality of humanitarian assistance and the accountability of humanitarian actors to their constituents, donors and affected populations through The Sphere Handbook, Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response, one of the most widely known and internationally recognized sets of common principles and universal minimum standards in life-saving areas of humanitarian response. Overall, the training had an impact on improving knowledge. With regard to the knowled ge exchange and documentation aspects of the workshop, participants reported that new knowledge was gained that could be applied in their own work and key lessons and solutions were highlighted for follow-up to document practices in a manner that can be shared, applied and tested further. B. Addressing the needs of women and girls living with disabilities 34. Worldwide, women and girls with disabilities face a risk of rape that is almost three times greater than that faced by women and girls in general , are twice as likely to experience other forms of gender-based violence and are more likely to suffer more severe injuries and more prolonged abuse. 7 In the 2018 call for proposals, 173 applications were received from 69 countries and territories, request ing a total of $64 million during the first special thematic funding window on violence against women and girls with disabilities. Supporting projects to address the needs of this long-underserved group of women and girls is a priority for the trust fund, which awarded nine new grants worth a total of $2.9 million for projects under this window. The new grants were announced on 24 July 2018, at the Global Disability Summit in __________________ 7 18-21716 Stephanie Ortoleva and Hope Lewis, “Forgotten Sisters – A Report on Violence against Women with Disabilities: An Overview of Its Nature, Scope, Causes and Consequences ”, Northeastern Public Law and Theory Faculty Research Papers Series, No. 104 (Northeastern University, Boston, 2012). 9/16