Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what plans his Department has to tackle the change in the level of violence against women and girls as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.

The UK is deeply concerned about the surge in violence against women and girls (VAWG) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have provided £20 million to UNICEF and £10 million to UNFPA, which includes funding to scale up reporting, protection and support services for women and children affected by violence. In September 2020, we announced new funding of £1 million to the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women's COVID-19 Crisis Response Window, on top of our existing £21 million contribution.

The UK is further stepping up our international leadership on this agenda with our co-leadership of the new Generation Equality global Action Coalition on Gender-based Violence (GBV). We are using this platform to drive more concerted, coordinated and scaled-up global action to prevent GBV. This has included initiating a joint statement on GBV and COVID-19 by the Action Coalition which was launched at the UN General Assembly in 2020. This can be found here: https://forum.generationequality.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/Joint_ACLeaders_statement_GBV_En.pdf.

We are also scaling up our investments, including through plans to launch in 2021 a new seven-year programme to scale up effective interventions to prevent VAWG - What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale. This will be the first global effort to systematically scale-up of VAWG prevention efforts globally.