CENTEROFARAB   مركز المرأة WOMENFOR العربية TRAINING للتدريب ANDRESEARCH و البحوث   Réf. :                                                                                                                         الرقم :   Date:                                                                                                                                  التاريخ :     International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women:   “CAWTAR” publishes Arab regional directory of Arab institutions active in the area       On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Centre for Arab Women Training and Research "CAWTAR" announces the publication of a regional directory of governmental and non-governmental institutions to support women and girls survivors of violence, under the slogan “Together Against Gender-Based Violence.”   The directory provides all necessary information in Arabic, French and English, and includes various data about 416 governmental and non-governmental institutions, international and regional organizations and networks working in the field of anti-gender-based violence. It also provides data and services for battered women or survivors of violence in 19 Arab countries (Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Mauritania and Yemen). The directory sums up more than ten years of efforts that considered violence a phenomenon that must be combated and called for working to provide legal, social and political frameworks to face it. Thus, awareness of its seriousness, not only for women but also families and communities, shifted from the level of women's rights groups to the international level and in particular to governmental level of the States. Overall and standardized strategies have been prepared to contain this phenomenon and therefore diversify services to inform women and girls survivors of violence. The directory in its print version is a sophisticated and updated result of the electronic version that was announced last year, in a series of awareness-raising, training and technical support activities within a comprehensive project implemented by the Center of "CAWTAR,” with the support of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. The directory reflects the richness and diversity of Arab experiences and dynamics and paths of each country in dealing with the forms of violence against women in Arab countries. The importance of this pioneering achievement does not only rest in its being the first precedent in the Arab region, but also its uniqueness in making an inventory of institutions and their AZ categorization while monitoring initiatives and projects, and thereby providing information about organizations that support women and girls victims of gender-based violence. These are factors that will ensure the development of an Arab regional map to determine services provided to survivors of violence. It will allow access to services and bring them closer to all workers in this area. The Center of "CAWTAR" also seeks to ensure that institutions and individuals adopt the directory to contribute to enrich and update it to elevate it from the level of specialized database to a special section on data related to gender-based violence in the context of the virtual centre of “CAWTAR” for the exchange of information on gender and development “Clearing House.”     In addition to working on the completion of the directory, the Center of "CAWTAR" held a series of training courses by relying on the training kit it implemented to build the capacity of service-providers (civil society representatives, public health agents, Staff of the Ministry of the Interior, Media ...) and with the support of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. On the other hand, it carried out, in cooperation with the German Agency for Technical Cooperation GTZ training courses in Yemen for the benefit of police and security staff as they are the first to deal with victims of violence among girls and women in case they lodge complaints.