Thursday, September 27, 2012

President Obama issued an Executive Order on Preventing and Responding to Violence Against Women and Girls Globally.

In august 2012, President Obama publicly showed his support to continue the struggle to stop violence against women by issuance of an Executive Order.  The Executive Order requires enhanced coordination of the United States’ efforts through the creation of an interagency working group, co-chaired by Secretary of State Clinton and USAID Administrator Shah, designed to leverage our country’s tremendous expertise and capacity to prevent and respond to gender-based violence globally as well as establish a coordinated, government-wide approach to address this terrible reality.
The Executive Order directs Federal agencies to implement a new strategy, developed by USAID and the State Department. The four objectives of the strategy to prevent and respond to gender-based violence globally are to: (1) increase coordination of gender-based violence prevention and response efforts among United States Government agencies and with other stakeholders; (2) enhance integration of gender-based violence prevention and response efforts into existing United States Government work; (3) improve collection, analysis, and use of data and research to enhance gender-based violence prevention, and response efforts; and (4) enhance and expand United States Government programming that addresses gender-based violence.
The Executive Order also requires that the work is evaluated in line with the Administration’s focus on data collection and research. Recognizing that this is a long-term commitment, the Executive Order directs the interagency working group to update or revise the strategy after three years.
Our commitment to ending violence against women and girls is both a foreign policy priority and a domestic policy priority. The United States has made tremendous progress on violence against women and girls domestically since the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994. Since the passage of the Act, annual rates of domestic violence have dropped by more than 60 percent.

 Thanks for reading.

HUMA KAMGAR ESQ.,