A/HRC/32/3 E/CN.6/2016/8 II. Context 6. The movement to prevent and end violence against women and girls has seen enormous progress since the Trust Fund was established 20 years ago. However, despite achievements in a number of areas, gender-based violence remains a human rights crisis affecting girls and women all over the world, regardless of class, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation or culture. Such violence is at the brutal extreme of a spectrum of discrimination that denies women a whole range of rights and is one of the key cross-cutting challenges identified in General Assembly resolution 70/1, entitled “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ”, in which Member States adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in September 2015. 7. The estimates concerning current levels of violence against women and girls reflect a prevalence that is painfully familiar, with around a third of women worldwide having experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence by a non-partner. Intimate partner violence remains the most common form of violence and women account for two thirds of victims of intimate partner or family-related homicides. Violence against women and girls takes many forms, from sexual harassment in schools to systematic sexual violence in conflict-related situations and female genital mutilation, the latter affecting more than 125 million women. In most countries, fewer than 40 per cent of women survivors of violence seek help of any sort. 2 8. In the Sustainable Development Goals, States reiterated their recognition of the fact that eliminating gender-based violence is fundamental to the achievement of sustainable development. The Trust Fund has elaborated its future priorities in the context of those global commitments. They will serve to direct and galvanize Trust Fund efforts to elicit and allocate the resources needed to support the achievement of relevant targets within the new Sustainable Development Goals. 9. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda, adopted at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, in July 2015, reaffirmed the centrality of the full realization of women’s’ and girls’ rights, including the right to be free of violence (see General Assembly resolution 69/313). The Trust Fund welcomed the reaffirmation by the world’s governments that resourcing efforts to address and end violence against women is crucial to achieving sustainable development. 10. In line with the recommendations made by the Commission at its fifty -seventh session, in 2013, the Trust Fund focuses its efforts strategically on initiatives that look to strengthen the implementation of legal and policy framewo rks and the provision of timely, comprehensive and multisectoral services for survivors (see E/2013/27-E/CN.6/2013/11). As the projects described below show, such initiatives can produce life-changing results, including in conflict and post-conflict situations. Responding to recommendations about the need for an enhanced evidence base, since 2013 the Trust Fund has also worked to develop and establish improved monitoring and evaluation mechanisms with the ultimate aim of sharing lessons learned and replicating and upscaling effective initiatives to address various aspects of violence against women. The programmes are as diverse as the communities in __________________ 2 15-22220 Statistics Division, The World’s Women 2015: Trends and Statistics, chapter 6, available from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/chapter6/chapter6.html. 3/17