The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) announced on Wednesday that it would distribute 3.5 million U.S. dollars to dozens of groups from Argentina to Zimbabwe in the coming year to end violence against women in developing countries.

At a press conference held at the UN Headquarters, UNIFEM Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer said the grants would be funneled through its United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, a multilateral mechanism created by the General Assembly in 1996 and administered by UNIFEM.

The money would go to groups dedicating their time and energy to ensure the implementation of policies and laws that address violence against women, she added.

"Violence against women knows no boundaries, it knows no territory, no wealth level and it really occurs everywhere, in every country in the world today," said Heyzer.

While clarifying that UNIFEM's mandate focuses on developing countries, Heyzer said that the agency adhered to the standards and human rights norms of the United Nations as it looked at occurrences of gender-based violence around the world.

She added that the issue of "ending violence against women was very deeply rooted and, therefore, the structured discrimination in women's lives had to be dealt with and that was something that all the groups that were being funded had been looking at."

The grantees can be delineated into three main categories that cover 28 initiatives worth about 2.8 million dollars spreading around 20 countries, including one regional project. A second round of grants, totaling 700,000 dollars that would focus on the links between gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS, would be announced in March 2007, she added.

Since its creation, the Trust Fund has distributed nearly 13 million dollars to 226 initiatives in more than 100 countries, according to press materials made available at the press conference.

Source: Xinhua