International Violence Against Women Act of 2010

Bill: 111-s-2982
Sponsor: Sen. Kerry, John F. [D-MA]
Introduced: 2010-02-04 in the Senate
Policy area: International Affairs
Subjects: Conflicts and wars
Congressional oversight
Crime victims
Crimes against women
Foreign aid and international relief
Human rights
International organizations and cooperation
Judicial procedure and administration
Law enforcement officers
Lawyers and legal services
Marriage and family status
Military education and training
Sex, gender, sexual orientation discrimination
United Nations
Violent crime
Women's education
Women's health
Women's rights
World health

Summary:
action_date: 2010-02-04
text: 
International Violence Against Women Act of 2010 - Directs: (1) the Secretary of State to designate an Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues; and (2) the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to designate a Women's Development Advisor.
 
Directs the Secretary to: (1) develop a comprehensive strategy to prevent violence against women and girls; (2) prepare a public report on best practices for preventing and addressing violence against women and girls internationally; and (3) determine emergency response measures to identified critical or widespread incidents of violence against women and girls in situations of armed conflict.
 
Authorizes the Secretary and the Administrator to provide assistance to nongovernmental organizations, multilateral institutions, and foreign countries to implement such strategy and related activities.
 
Requires that special efforts be made to award amounts appropriated under this Act to community-based and women's nongovernmental organizations in recipient countries.
 
Directs the Secretary and the Secretary of Defense (DOD) to: (1) incorporate training on prevention and response into the basic training curricula of foreign military forces and judicial officials; and (2) ensure that U.S. assistance to units involved in regional or multilateral peacekeeping operations includes such training.
 
Authorizes the Ambassador to provide guidance to the Administrator and the Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration.
 
Authorizes the Secretary to provide guidance on preventing and responding to violence against women and girls to the Secretary of Defense when U.S. military personnel, military contractors, and military observers are to be deployed in humanitarian relief, conflict, and post-conflict settings.
 
Directs the Secretary to make U.S. financial, material, human, and other resources available to assist U.N. efforts to: (1) implement training programs in prevention and response to violence against women and girls for peacekeeping and humanitarian personnel; (2) enhance the deployment of military and civilian women in peacekeeping missions; and (3) improve protection mechanisms at U.N. managed refugee and internally displaced persons camps.
 

 

action_date: 2010-12-21
text: 
International Violence Against Women Act of 2010 - 
Title I: International Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls - Subtitle A: Official Designations and Institutional Changes
 - (Sec. 101) Directs the Secretary of State to designate a senior Department of State official to conduct the Secretary's activities under this Act.
 
Directs such designee to: (1) work with the heads of relevant bureaus and offices of the Department of State and other federal departments and agencies to track and analyze data on international activities to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls in order to produce an accounting of U.S. government spending on such activities; and (2) brief Congress annually on international prevention and response strategies and programming and submit to Congress an assessment of human and financial resources necessary to fulfill the purposes of this Act.
 
(Sec. 102) Directs the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to designate a senior USAID official to conduct the activities of the Administrator under this Act.
 
Directs such designee to: (1) work with relevant USAID technical and regional bureaus engaged in any aspect of international prevention and response to track and analyze data and findings on USAID international prevention and response programs; and (2) brief Congress annually on international prevention and response strategies and programming and submit to Congress an assessment of human and financial resources necessary to fulfill the purposes of this Act.
 

Subtitle B: Strategy, Policies, and Programs
 - (Sec. 111) Directs the Secretary to: (1) develop a publicly available, comprehensive, five-year international strategy to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls internationally; and (2) submit the strategy to the appropriate congressional committees.
 
Requires such strategy to: (1) identify eligible countries with significant levels of violence against women and girls that have the government or nongovernment organizational capacity to manage and implement gender-based violence prevention and response program activities; (2) select 5 to 20 of such countries in which to develop a comprehensive individual country plan; (3) coordinate with federal departments and agencies that have existing programs relevant to the strategy or that will be involved in new program activities; (4) describe the monitoring mechanisms and resource levels established for each eligible country; (5) include capacity-building and technical assistance for community-based women's nongovernmental organizations and community-based organizations; (6) integrate gender analysis into the strategy for each country to ensure that the roles of women, girls, men, and boys are appropriately addressed; and (7) include strategies to accommodate the needs of stateless, internally displaced, refugee, or religious or ethnic minority women and girls.
 
Requires the strategy developed for an eligible country to contain at least two of the following program activities: (1) enhancing the capacity of the health sector to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls; (2) development of civil and criminal legal and judicial sanctions, protections, trainings, and capacity; (3) development of programs to change social norms so that violence against women and girls is neither condoned nor tolerated; (4) ensuring accessible quality educational and literacy opportunities for women and girls; and (5) promotion of access to economic opportunity projects, including increasing distribution, credit, property, and inheritance rights for women and girls.
 
(Sec. 112) Authorizes the Secretary and the Administrator to provide assistance to nongovernmental organizations, multilateral institutions, and foreign countries to implement such strategy and related activities.
 
Provides that to the extent possible 10% of the amount of assistance provided to an eligible country should be provided to community-based organizations, including community-based women's nongovernmental organizations.
 
(Sec. 113) Directs the Secretary to prepare a public report on best practices for preventing and addressing violence against women and girls internationally. 
 
Amends the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to include information on the nature and extent of violence against women and girls in the Secretary's annual human rights report to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
 
Directs the Secretary to coordinate data collection and evaluations of international violence against women and girls programs. 
 
Authorizes the Secretary to provide financial assistance for original research or analysis of effective interventions to prevent or respond to violence against women and girls internationally.
 
(Sec. 114) Authorizes the Secretary to provide guidance to the Secretary of Defense (DOD) on: (1) incorporating training on prevention and response to violence against women and girls into the basic training curricula of foreign military forces, police forces, and judicial officials; and (2) ensuring that assistance under specified programs to units involved in regional or multilateral peacekeeping operations includes such training.
 
(Sec. 115) Directs Secretary and the Administrator to: (1) provide assistance to programs carried out by international organizations, local nongovernmental organizations, and governments that prevent and respond to violence against women and girls in humanitarian relief, conflict, and post-conflict settings; (2) work to incorporate activities to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls internationally into multilateral or bilateral disarmament, demobilization, or reintegration efforts: (3) deploy specialists in violence against women and girls as an integral part of the USAID's Disaster Assistance Response Teams; and (4) strive to ensure that grantees deployed in humanitarian relief, conflict, and post-conflict operations train humanitarian workers in preventing and responding to violence against women and girls, conduct public outreach to make known the mechanisms for reporting violence against women and girls, and respond to reports of violence against women and girls.
 
Directs the Secretary to assist U.N. efforts to: (1) implement training programs in prevention and response to violence against women and girls for peacekeeping and humanitarian personnel; (2) enhance the deployment of military and civilian women in peacekeeping missions; (3) improve protection mechanisms at U.N. managed refugee and internally displaced persons camps; and (4) support contributing countries in taking appropriate actions to prevent violence and abuse.
 
Directs the Secretary to: (1) identify critical or widespread incidents of violence against women and girls in situations of armed conflict; (2) determine emergency response measures within 45 days; and (3) brief Congress, upon request, on such measures' implementation. 
 

Title II: Authorization of Appropriations
 - (Sec. 201) Authorizes FY2011-FY2015 appropriations.


Legislative actions:
action_date: 2010-12-21
text: Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Calendar No. 725.
action_date: 2010-12-21
text: Committee on Foreign Relations. Reported by Senator Kerry with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. Without written report.
action_date: 2010-12-21
text: Committee on Foreign Relations. Reported by Senator Kerry with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. Without written report.
action_date: 2010-12-14
text: Committee on Foreign Relations. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably.
action_date: 2010-02-04
text: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
action_date: 2010-02-04
text: Introduced in Senate