Díli, 22 February 2022 – Plan International Timor-Leste (PITL) through EU-UN Spotlight Initiative partnering with UN Women, launched an Assessment Report on Mainstreaming Prevention Efforts and an Accessible Online Platform in Timor-Leste to prevent and eliminate violance against women and girls. The launch is a result of PITL's work on implementing Knowlegde Development Program on Prevention Approach with a commitment to prevent violance against women and girls on a comprehensive national strategic agreement on attitude change by using an ecological model.

The report highlights the result from the collaboration with key actors on the prevention of violence against women and girls from Civil Society Organizations (CSO) and government partners in Timor-Leste. It found that there is no clear definition of “prevention”, and the utilization of prevention documents differ for prevention actors. To address the issue, it suggests defining “prevention based on global and local context and unifying all the prevention documents.

Simultaneously, PITL also launched an accessible online platform for the prevention of violence against women and girls in Timor-Leste. The platform is developed to save and share all the national prevention documents taken from prevention activities, a manual used for prevention training, mapping of prevention work and other prevention resources.

“The report serves as a reference and include best practices for the strategic implementation of prevention work and to discover the gaps to develop a recommendation to government institutions, especially Secretary Estates for Equality and Inclusion (SEII) and CSOs, National and International NGOs that work on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) prevention to enhance an effective mechanism approach on the implementation of ending violence against women and girls (EVAWG) strategy,” said Country Director of PITL, Mrs Dillyana Ximenes.

The report and online platform were approved by SEII and serve as a fountain of credible sources for prevention actors in developing a comprehensive and contextual prevention program using ecological model and RESPECT framework, ensuring the messages to be disseminated are aligned.  

“Equality between women and men is a fundamental principle of the European Union. The European Union is already by far the first investor in gender equality around the world. Together with partners, like PITL, we will continue to fight for women's human rights. So today, I am very pleased to participate in the launch of this report, considered as a relevant national prevention strategy, and the online platform, which will concretely contribute to our fight against gender-based violence. Violence against women is violence against the entire society – so the entire society must be involved, and react to end it”, said Mr. Andrew Jacobs, the EU Ambassador to Timor-Leste.  

The State Secretary for Equality and Inclusion, Her Excellency Maria José da Fonseca Monteiro de Jesus noticed the progress from the SI in complementing to government’s efforts of EVAWG, “through SEII, the government continue to advocate to all government institutions and other entities to establish working mechanisms to enable the implementation of programs and activities that would contribute to words the elimination of violence against women and girls in Timor-Leste. Spotlight Initiative’s objective to eliminate violence against women and girls is in line with the government’s policy and will reinforce government’s efforts and as a way to contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals in 2030 especially the SDG number 5 on Gender Equality”

“Today, we witness the launch of the result of the work done by Plan International Timor-Leste under the prevention pillar of the Spotlight Initiative. The launch of the report of the evaluation on mainstreaming prevention of violence against women and girls in Timor-Leste as well as the online data platform which can be accessed through a link available on SEII’s website will facilitate all partners to have access to additional information on prevention and will enable them to provide a better service to contribute to ending violence against women and girls”

“Violence has never been an in-built part of human behaviours or conditioning. We can pre-empt and prevent violence. Data, knowledge, information, and other evidence-based approaches are contributing to preventing violence. Spotlight Initiative activities implemented by Plan International as UN Women’s partner organization have resulted in the assessment of prevention work approach in Timor-Leste, including developing accessible data in an online platform that will help the government with the development of the new NAP-GBV and continue serving as a substantial reference to the prevention actors,” said Roy Trivedy, UN Resident Coordinator.

The Spotlight Initiative is a multi-year partnership between the European Union and the United Nations with a global investment of $550 million by the European Union. In Timor-Leste, the three-year investment of the initiative worth USD 15 million, aims to strengthen the country’s legal frameworks and institutions, promote positive social norms, increase access to support services for survivors of violence, improve the collection and use of data for better policymaking and to strengthen partnerships with CSOs.