Women and girls: reaching full potential

Addressing gender-based violence

Addressing gender-based violence is an important part of UNFPA’s work in Malaysia. We work with a non-governmental organization, the Women's Institute of Management (WIM), on prevention and management of gender-based violence through community mobilization and promoting health sector response to gender-based violence. WIM’s economic empowerment training, with courses on, for example, tailoring, and jewellery making, are an ideal setting to incorporate modules on gender-based violence and how it affects women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Through the courses, we educate women on sexual and reproductive health and rights, how to find refuge when needed, where to go to for legal advice and for help with police reporting.  The courses also engage participants’ husbands. This pilot programme showed how effective such training can be, and the WIM thus became a resource for others to run similar progrmames, such as other NGOs, as well as the military and the police.

UNFPA’s future focus in this area will be advocating for a comprehensive nationwide health sector response to gender-based violence through the Ministry of Health’s One-Stop Crisis Centres and beyond.