The High-Level Network on Gender-Responsive Policing: Building commitment on gender-responsive policing

This advocacy brief introduces the High-Level Network on Gender-Responsive Policing, which was launched at a side event at the Fourth United Nations Chiefs of Police Summit on 26 June 2024, fulfilling a promise made at the 2021 Generation Equality Forum in Paris to establish a Member State network that would drive change on gender-responsive policing.

Chaired by Chile, the Netherlands, and Senegal, the network currently consists of 19 Member States, with UN Women as Secretariat. It provides a collaborative platform for convening expertise, facilitating knowledge exchange, and fostering partnerships on gender-responsive policing in relation to five key areas:

• institutional change;
• prevention and investigation;
• capacity-strengthening;
• gender-responsive budgeting; and
• gender-responsive leadership.

The network is helping shape and build widespread commitment among law enforcement associations to promote the benefits of gender-responsive policing and support the creation of gender-responsive law enforcement institutions. It also demonstrates commitment at the highest levels to address sexual and gender-based violence, including violence against women and girls, as a crime which will be fully investigated by police in a survivor-centred and trauma-informed way, and perpetrators held accountable.