Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Director Jennifer Klein at the Launch of the National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence: Strategies for Action
Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the launch of the U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence: Strategies for Action. I am pleased to welcome many colleagues and friends, from inside and outside of government, to the White House, and welcome those who are participating virtually.
I’m delighted that this event brings together so many vital allies in our work to prevent and end gender-based violence, including survivors, advocates, researchers, and other representatives from civil society, as well as leaders from federal departments and agencies.
I’m Jennifer Klein, Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Gender Policy Council. Preventing and addressing gender-based violence is a lifelong commitment for both President Biden and Vice President Harris. The consequences and costs of gender-based violence impact individual survivors, families, and entire communities. The ripple effects of gender-based violence are felt across our economy, and our country. Women and girls from historically marginalized communities—including people of color, LGBTQI+ people, and individuals with disabilities, among others—are disproportionately impacted.
The Biden-Harris Administration has made ending gender-based violence one of the cornerstones of our approach to advancing gender equity and equality in both our domestic and foreign policy.
In the Executive Order establishing the White House Gender Policy Council, the President called on us to develop the first-ever national plan to end gender-based violence, recognizing that supporting survivors and promoting prevention is not limited to just one, or even two agencies. As the President has long said, it takes all of us—working together across all levels of government, and across sectors—if we are to effectively tackle this scourge.
And so it is with that lens that more than a dozen federal agencies came together to develop this National Plan, which takes an intersectional, interdisciplinary approach to preventing and responding to gender-based violence, throughout the life course.
Perhaps most importantly, the National Plan we’re releasing today reflects input from an extensive series of listening sessions with survivor leaders, advocates, state domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions, culturally-specific resource centers, faith-based organizations and networks, law enforcement and prosecutors, the private sector, academia, and U.S. federal departments and agencies.
In launching this today, the U.S. is pleased to join the more than 80 countries with national action plans on gender-based violence—which the United Nation recognizes as a best practice.
This National Plan both complements, and bolsters our effectiveness to implement, our 2022 U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally. Like our Global Strategy, it takes a survivor-centered, trauma-informed approach, drawing from rigorous evidence, and, importantly, the leadership and experiences of survivors—particularly those from marginalized and underserved communities and populations that are most impacted by violence and abuse.
With this National Plan, the Biden-Harris Administration is taking decisive action to further our commitment to prevent and respond to gender-based violence, identifying areas for action to guide new research, policy development, program planning, service delivery, and other efforts by federal and nonfederal stakeholders.
We’ve also worked to incorporate new insights, addressing emerging forms of gender-based violence, such as online harassment and abuse—and lessons-learned from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which taught us the critical importance of recognizing domestic and sexual violence service providers as frontline responders.
So, I want to thank all of you who shared your time, expertise, and insight. Because of your engagement, this National Plan will strengthen the U.S. Government’s commitment to advancing the right of all people to live free from violence.
It is now my pleasure to turn it over to Rosie Hidalgo, Special Assistant to the President and White House Senior Advisor for Gender-Based Violence, who will be our emcee for today’s program and share some framing for our discussion.
