With a starting injection of close to one million dollars, the United Nations and the Government of Bermuda put their new cooperation framework into action by launching a programme to close the business financing gaps that particularly affect women, the youth and people living with disabilities.

The United Nations Joint SDG Fund has injected nearly $1 million into this programme which takes steps to facilitate the sustainable economic empowerment of women, youth and people with disabilities and their greater access to financial mechanisms, knowledge sharing and capacity building particularly in areas of agribusiness and fishing.

UN Women MCO Caribbean launched a series of dialogues across the CARICOM region on men as partners to realise gender equality in partnership with the Government of Canada. Men were drawn from various disciplines including activists, community and social workers, and they focussed on personal meanings of masculinities, masculinity in Barbadian communitiesand understanding the connection between masculinities, power imbalances and forms of gender injustice.

As a preventive strategy to reduce the prevalence of violence against women and societal violence overall in a region with one of the highest rates of rape in the world*, UN Women’s Caribbean Office and its partners have developed a community intervention programme for boys aged 13-16.