During the year, the APF provided practical support to help our members in their work to promote and protect women’s rights, including through strategic advice, training and “seed funding”. Following our inaugural training program on the human rights of women and girls in 2015, the APF provided grants of AUD5000 to assist two of our members to undertake activities to address systemic violations of women’s and girls’ rights. DISCUSSING REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN AFGHANISTAN Seed funding provided by the APF was used by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission to run a ground-breaking workshop on reproductive rights. Held in Bamyan province in June 2016, the workshop may be the first of its kind in the country. Twenty female teachers from girls’ schools and ten civil society activists took part in the workshop. They considered a wide range of topics – including reproductive rights from an Islamic perspective and the medical consequences of underage productivity – and produced concrete proposals for further action. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission used this funding to hold a ground-breaking workshop on reproductive rights for female teachers from girls’ schools (see more in the feature box), while the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal, with training support from the APF, will shortly begin a public inquiry on gender-based violence in one province where women are most at risk. In June 2016, we published a video series on the human rights of women and girls – available on our website – to support our training program for APF members. Gender equity within the APF secretariat During the year, we continued to implement recommendations from an independent 2014 report that set out concrete steps to mainstream gender considerations across the internal operations of the APF secretariat. Seven of the 12 recommendations have been implemented, while work on five recommendations is ongoing. The six core staff of the APF secretariat includes three males and three females, with one male and one female at senior management. There are two male and two female expert consultants. 2015–2016 In 2015–2016, 14% of the APF budget was allocated to activities that promote gender integration and the rights of women and girls gender integration & the rights of women and girls 18 14% of budget