UN Women, in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) and the International Association of Women Police (IAWP) recently launched a new Handbook on Gender-Responsive Police Services for Women and Girls Subject to Violence. The handbook provides practical, peer-to-peer guidance for police to enable an effective and gender-sensitive response to violence against women and girls and complements existing global and country-specific training materials for law enforcement.

In the past 12 months, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, intimate partner violence reports have risen sharply across the globe, with calls to helplines increasing five-fold in some countries. Women and girls are now often ‘locked down’ with their abusers, cut off from family and friends, and police and justice services are under pressure to ensure women and girls can access support, especially when traditional pathways have been shut down due to restrictions or social distancing measures.

Read more: Why taking a survivor-centred approach to police services is important in a global pandemic (UNwomen.org)

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