Today is Human Rights Day. It marks the end of #16days of action that began on November 25, the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Some of the wonderful people working at service and advice centres across the country have written blogs for our website during this time that give an insight from the frontline of this fight.

The services in which they work - providing support and counselling and safe spaces for women and girls whose lives have been turned upside down by domestic abuse, sexual assault, FGM, forced marriages and other forms of violence - are constantly under threat because of inadequate funding and disastrously short-term commissioning processes.

That puts vulnerable people at even greater risk.

On top of that, the current housing crisis is making it increasingly difficult to find enough space to support women through the transition into their own safe, secure and permanent accommodation.

Today I am visiting Greenwich Domestic Violence and Abuse Services, whose staff contributed to our blog series. I am looking forward to meeting women for whom Greenwich DVA’s refuges provide a safe space in which to begin their recovery from trauma and start to rebuild their lives.

I will see first-hand how these spaces save lives.

The Women’s Equality Party is working hard to help these services, all around the country, continue to save lives.

We have set out our own policy commitments to bring about an end to violence against women and girls:

• WE aim to ensure that all women and girls who experience sexual, domestic or other violence have access to specialist advocacy and support services

• WE will create a fund – more than £800m by 2018-19 – to support the legal aid budget, restoring half of the cuts made in 2012, and providing ring-fenced funds to local authorities for VAWG services

• WE will expand services to ensure we can provide a stable place to live for all women and children fleeing domestic abuse, starting with crisis and refuge services and moving into more permanent housing

• WE will ensure that access to support services for women who have experienced violence is not dependent on their immigration status

And we think that all parties should unite in their commitment to end violence against women and girls by also committing to sustainable and secure funding that is not put at risk by different political priorities.

Our 16 blogs in 2015 told the story of poor funding, poor planning and poor provision for the women and girls in our country that need us the most.

In 2016, we’d like to tell a different story.

Over the last three decades and more, Southall Black Sisters (SBS) has consistently addressed the needs of BME women, in particular in the face of their experiences of violence and multiple or intersectional discrimination. This is a term used by the United Nations and statutory and voluntary bodies to refer to the specific ways in which multiple strands of discrimination overlap in simultaneous and complex ways to create heightened vulnerabilities and discrimination.

It is precisely because of the complexity of BME women’s experiences and the historical failure of statutory and other generic services to address them that specialist organisations led by and for BME women like SBS developed in the late 1970s.

We provide an important lifeline for BME women who remain one of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups in our society. Just as importantly, we have often led the way to key reforms in areas such as forced marriage and honour-based violence.

Currently, through a number of cases, SBS is pressing for greater awareness and government effort to tackle the problem of religious, especially Sharia, tribunals and councils that discriminate against women and children and put them at risk of further violence.

We are also campaigning to highlight the emerging phenomenon of transnational marriage abandonment and violence against women. These are acts of violence committed against women in transnational spaces that leave vulnerable women without recourse to protection and rights simply because the offences against them occur in spaces that straddle a number of jurisdictions. Precisely because of jurisdictional problems, governments and states can and do abdicate their responsibility in bringing perpetrators to account and in upholding the human rights of such women. 

A growing list of long-established secular BME refuges and advice centres based in Brent, Manchester, Nottingham, Leicester, Sheffield, Coventry, Rotherham and elsewhere have either closed or are facing the threat of closure in recent months. SBS is no stranger to these threats.

In July 2008, at the High Court, we won an important legal challenge affirming our right to exist and to continue our work as an organisation of, by and for BME women.  

Despite our success, secular BME women’s organisations are being decimated across the country and this development is exacerbated by the state’s promotion of regressive religious forces that are filling the vacuum and benefiting from the democratic deficit that is created in the process. 

The future of the BME women’s movement symbolised by long-standing BME women’s organisations like SBS is now hanging by a thread. This unfolding crisis needs urgent attention from all those concerned by the growing levels of inequality in our society.

But what is also urgently needed is the development of a progressive politics of solidarity between and within the women’s groups that recognise that what is at stake is no less than the fight for secular, progressive, feminist, anti fundamentalist, anti-racist and human rights values.

The issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) might be front page news and the go-to policy success for the PM, but work to prevent it and support survivors on the ground is grossly underfunded, or not at all in some places.

When we started Daughters of Eve five years ago the issue had been neglected for years so the idea of funding for a survivor-led or focused organisation was wishful thinking. Years on this is still the case. Organisations working directly with those affected or at risk of FGM are mostly run on good will and commitment from some amazing people.

Integrate Bristol, which is the UK leading charity working with young people from FGM affected communities has since it was founded in 2008 till only months ago been staffed by volunteers. This an organisation that supports over a 100 young people, and has spearheaded campaigns on ending FGM and other forms of violence against women and girls within BME communities.  

The practice of FGM is a reality in this country and those at risk need specialist support, which cannot be provided on the shoestring grants or funding pots currently out there. Nor can we keep relying on volunteers to deliver life-saving work.

The systems needed to help identify FGM have been successful and we are now more aware of the issue, but this also means that more young women will be coming forward for support that is currently lacking. I can personally tell you how painful it is to be on a phone for hours seeking a bed for a young woman who fears for her life because she needed medical treatment after an act of violence.

The lack of services and support for those affected by or at risk of FGM is only one part of a bigger picture, and we need to take a more reliable, thoughtful approach across the board.

Nimco Ali is the founder of Daughters of Eve

Support services are only the first step to helping women to face a variety of challenges when they are fleeing violence.

Housing for Women have 80 years of experience in championing women to access suitable housing. We deliver projects that support women and their children through a number of the strands of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strands. These include our Re-Unite project that supports women who have been released from prison to be re-united and housed with their children, our Re-Place project that assists women who have experienced trafficking, as well as a range of Domestic Abuse services in Ealing, Greenwich and Merton.

Whether a woman loses her home due to domestic violence and/or abuse, exploitation or prison her life, and often her children’s lives, are plunged into uncertainty. Cuts to legal aid and welfare benefits and the threat of long term homelessness together with the potential of losing custody of her children exacerbate this.

Many of our support services provide crucial safe temporary housing, but with the current housing crisis there are less and less housing options available and it is becoming increasingly difficult to support women in their transition into their own safe, secure and permanent accommodation.

Local councils are under increasing pressure to house vulnerable women after they have been in temporary accommodation. It is challenging for councils without the means to take action to do so. The private renting sector can be almost impossible to ‘crack’ for those who claim any sort of housing benefits, and even for those with jobs rent levels are often unaffordable.

Support services like ours provide a crucial short term means to empower women into an independent and positive long-term future.

Many women report that the support we offer is life-changing. We want to ensure that this important first step to recovery and independence remains available to women in the future. 

Roxanna Donald is a Support Worker for Housing for Women.

As we start the 16 days of action opposing violence against women, the picture in the UK is bleak. Specialist women’s services up and down the country are seeing huge increases on demand for their services yet these self-same services are shrinking, closing or at risk of closure. One such sad casualty was Eaves which, after 29 years working to end violence against women, closed at the end of October.

The sorts of challenges that organisations face are linked to commissioning processes which favour large, generic, non-specialist organisations with economies of scale and significant reserves so they can subsidise tenders. This directly militates against small, specialist, women only services (which we know is what works and what women want) being able to win tenders. In turn this has a hugely negative impact on the quality of services that women receive.

Eaves managed to save some services, in collaboration with Nia, Gaia, Women in Prison and the Beth Centre. Sadly, the Alice project, which averted homelessness for 294 women in one year, could not be saved.

The big unknown is the Poppy project, which was the first British service to work with women trafficked into prostitution or domestic labour.  They operated way over the minimum standards allowed for by the Government contract. They undertook outreach in prisons and detention centres identifying women missed by the system. They provided gender specific and victim centred support beyond the minimum of 45 days. They challenged wrongful decisions achieving a high success rate with women.

The fact that they built such trust and supported women for so much longer than is provided for, accounts for the fact that the Poppy project helped women to bring a total of 45 traffickers to justice achieving some 423 years sentences between them! However Poppy is not gone – it is trying to set up independently. There may be a break in service but they’ll be back. 

Heather Harvey was formerly research and development manager at Eaves.

Sophie Walker, leader of the Women's Equality Party

Today marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. In an effort to draw attention to the scale of this human rights catastrophe, campaigners around the world will be raising their voices in protest and major landmarks in many countries will be lit up in orange.

One of them will be Niagara Falls, where six million cubic feet of water plummet over the crest line every minute. It seems an apt choice to mark the scale of the problem.

Globally, one in three women experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. Some 20 percent of British women have experienced rape and/or sexual assault, according to the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales. And as a result, tens of thousands of women and children in the UK are forced to leave their homes and seek refuge and support in safe places.

Over the last year, Rape Crisis organisations, which offer everything from refuge and counselling to legal advice, responded to more than 3,000 helpline calls - a week. In total they received 165,000 calls between 2014 and 2015. Over the same period of time more than 21,000 women were supported by just 17 specialist organisations for black and minority ethnic women.

I am grateful to live in a society where the most vulnerable are cared for and protected. But I do not know for how much longer that will be the case.

Because today, when the government’s Spending Review lays out its plans for the disbursement of £4 trillion of taxpayers' money, not one Rape Crisis centre in England and Wales has funding fully confirmed beyond March 2016. In fact, 42 per cent of them have no funding confirmed at all.

This country’s sexual and domestic violence services are being drained by the current government. Last week, Rotherham’s Apna Haq centre was threatened with closure, despite being the only local specialist service for BME women and girls. Last month, London’s Eaves closed its doors after 38 years of support to women victims of violence.

Today’s Spending Review is a five-year projection of government spending. The five years it projects look bleak.

As life-funds ebb, the impact is being felt immediately. Waiting lists across the Rape Crisis network currently stand at 3,500. Women’s Aid turned away 320 women one day in 20111 - which they now describe as a typical day - due to lack of space. Over the last year, in London alone, 733 BME women sought refuge spaces in London. Only 154 were successful.

A loss to services is a loss to life.

On today’s international day of action it is time to call a halt to a funding model that is not fit for purpose.

Britain’s Violence Against Women and Girls support services are having the heart ripped out of them by budget cuts, short term contracts and crassly simplistic commissioning practices that push specialist units to one side in favour of bigger organisations that lack their expertise but can afford to undercut them.

Those services that do receive funding are often subjected to six month break clauses, so that government can continually assess their worth against other political priorities.

The Women’s Equality Party is committed to doing politics differently, and today WE call for cross-party commitment to do this funding differently. These services should not have to repeatedly face the threat of elimination, while the torrent of violence against women and girls continues.

WE think that specialist services should be able to plan and grow their services and not be vulnerable to the ebb and flow of changes in political thinking. And WE call on every other party in Britain to sign up to this model.

This week our members raised £31,500 in just six days to put candidates for the Women’s Equality Party on the ballot papers in Scotland, Wales and London next spring. They want every day to be a Day for Action. They want to prioritise equality for women regardless of other political battles.

Today, WE call on all political parties to unite in their commitment to ending violence against women and girls by uniting in a commitment to sustainable and secure funding.  

Our policies are here:

The Women’s Equality Party is committed to ending violence against women and girls.

• WE aim to ensure that all women and girls who experience sexual, domestic or other violence have access to specialist advocacy and support services

• WE will create a fund – more than £800m by 2018-19 – to support the legal aid budget, restoring half of the cuts made in 2012, and providing ring-fenced funds to local authorities for VAWG services

• WE will expand services to ensure we can provide a stable place to live for all women and children fleeing domestic abuse, starting with crisis and refuge services and moving into more permanent housing