Data Collection, Analysis and Research

In May 2025, UNODC facilitated a national workshop in Johannesburg on conceptualizing a research methodology for undertaking femicide reviews in South Africa. The workshop brought together researchers from governmental institutions and non-governmental organizations, including the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, Statistics South Africa, the Human Sciences Research Council, the Institute for Security Studies and the Pan-African Collective for Evidence. Building on a regional stakeholder consultation on femicide reviews convened by UNODC in 2024, the workshop explored how femicide reviews can be conducted in a global south context. UNODC facilitated the participation of international experts from the United States and the United Kingdom who shared their experiences with domestic homicide and femicide reviews.

Reliable, disaggregated data on violence against women and girls is essential to tracking progress, identifying gaps, and ensuring that policies and programmes are grounded in evidence. Spotlight Initiative invests in strengthening national data systems, results measurement frameworks, and the global evidence base on what works to end violence against women and girls.

In 2025, across the Initiative's programmes, more than 800 service providers, government officials, and civil society staff were trained to collect, manage, analyse, and report administrative data on violence against women and girls and harmful practices. Four countries, Ecuador, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda,[1] made progress toward establishing national, multisectoral administrative data systems. In Ecuador, the Unified Violence Registry was expanded to incorporate four new institutions, strengthening the ability of multiple entities to track, monitor, and coordinate responses to violence against women and girls. In Sierra Leone, the government-led rollout of GBVIMS+ dismantled data silos across police, ministries, and NGOs, enabling a unified dashboard tracking survivor pathways and strengthening cross-ministry referral linkages. In Uganda, over 700 district personnel were trained in GBV data management, strengthening harmonization and reporting quality across 12 districts, including aligning GBV data with refugee protection systems to better capture marginalized populations.

Strong data systems and rigorous measurement frameworks are foundational to the credibility, accountability, and learning that sustained efforts to end violence against women and girls require.

[1] As of 15 May 2026, the aggregated number of countries that made progress on administrative data systems was corrected from three to four. This figure supersedes all previously reported results and should be considered the official result.

Since 2024, UNFPA has significantly expanded its work on data to end violence against women (VAW), with a strong focus on strengthening measurement, capacity, and global comparability. 

• Central to this effort is the scaling up of the kNOwVAWdata initiative, which equips governments, researchers, and civil society with tools to collect and use ethical, high-quality VAW data. The initiative has been globalized beyond its initial regional Asia Pacific focus and has been adapted to the African, Latin American, Arabic and Central European specific realities. Training is now also accessible online, making it accessible to practitioners across the globe. In 2025, a major milestone was the finalization of the Harmful Practices module, covering child marriage, female genital mutilation, and gender-biased sex selection. This expanded the methodological scope of kNOwVAWdata and strengthened its contribution to SDG monitoring. Through the support of the University of Melbourne and the American University in Central Asia practitioners have been trained   globally and numerous countries supported in implementing VAW prevalence surveys and strengthening national data systems.
• UNFPA has also contributed to global VAW estimates by supporting WHO in the development and refinement of these datasets.
• In parallel, UNFPA has begun advancing the measurement of technology-facilitated violence against women (TFVAW), working with UN Women and WHO to develop a global statistical framework.
• In humanitarian settings, UNFPA continues to lead the Inter-Agency GBV Information Management System initiative including UNICEF, UNHCR, IMC and IRC supporting strengthened case management through safe and ethical data collection.
• In Latin America and the Caribbean, UNFPA has developed two documents providing technical guidance and recommendations to strengthen the generation of data on gender-based violence (GBV): one focused on administrative records and another on GBV prevalence surveys.
• UNFPA ASRO and ESCWA conducted qualitative research “Breaking the Silence: Addressing Elder Abuse in the Arab Region”. The report aims to fill critical knowledge gaps, raise awareness, and provide actionable policy recommendations. The report calls for collective action-by governments, civil society, and international organizations to ensure that older persons, including elder women,  are not only protected from abuse but also enabled to live with dignity, autonomy, and full participation in society.
• UNFPA ASRO finalized a comprehensive desk review on disability inclusion (2022–2025), mapping progress in integrating persons with disabilities,   especially women and girls, into SRH and GBV programming. Key achievements included technical support to the regional disability classification roadmap, rollout of the “We Decide” framework, and high-level advocacy with the League of Arab States.
• UNFPA ASRO translated evidence into action by leading UNFPA ASRO - UNICEF national consultations on the Child Marriage in Humanitarian Settings (CMiHS) study, incorporating inputs from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. The study’s regional launch in July 2025 informed country workplans, advocacy priorities, and technical guidance for 2026–2027 programming. 

The UN Trust Fund's model combines advocacy and financing with convening, learning and evidence generation. In 2025, this included an independent meta-analysis of evaluations completed across its 2021–2025 Strategic Plan, which confirmed that sustained investment in civil society delivers measurable results, including shifts in harmful social norms, improved access to survivor services, more responsive justice systems and stronger, more resilient women's organizations. The meta-analysis found that 100 per cent of initiatives reviewed demonstrated effectiveness, and nearly two thirds showed measurable impact on violence against women and girls, including in some cases reductions in rates of violence and prevention of harmful norms. This pattern is consistent over more than a decade of UN Trust Fund support. 

The UN Trust Fund also continued to expand its Evaluation Library, as a shared learning asset for partners and the broader ecosystem to end violence against women and girls. It now houses nearly 200 evaluations in English, French and Spanish, 25 added in 2025 alone and is home to one of the largest repositories on what works on EVAW/G.  Finally, 2025 was also a crucial year of funding cuts and backlash, and through the year, the UN Trust Fund continued to elevate how feminist CSOs are confronting growing political resistance, shrinking civic space, and the rollback of hard-won progress.

In 2025, UN Women strengthened data systems and research on violence against women and girls to support evidence-based policy and programming, focusing on improving the availability and use of prevalence, administrative and qualitative data and advancing global standards, including the statistical framework on femicide. 

As part of broader investments in gender data, UN Women increased SDG 5 data availability by over 60% since 2022, supported by 110 data initiatives in 2025. Key EVAWG data achievements included updating the Global Database on VAWG with country profiles for 154 countries, producing new global, regional and country estimates on intimate partner and non-partner violence in partnership with WHO, and strengthening institutional capacity through methodologies, consultations, and dissemination. UN Women complemented this with innovative pilots on femicide and technology-facilitated violence against women and girls (see under respective thematic measures) and technical support to national data production initiatives in 33 countries.

Innovations advanced measurement and methods on femicide, technology-facilitated violence, sexual harassment, and violence based on diverse SOGIESC, alongside regional and global capacity strengthening—reaching 319 data producers and users through workshops and knowledge exchange. Evidence generated through these efforts supported policy influence, with gender data informing 60 policies, plans and programmes in 2025, including reforms and improved survivor services linked to survey evidence in countries such as Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and the United Republic of Tanzania. 

Overall, these advances strengthened the global evidence base for targeted interventions, accountability and more effective prevention and response to violence against women and girls.

UNODC, in cooperation with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), provided updated global estimates of intimate partner/family member femicides through annual publications on femicides (in 2022, 2023 and 2024).  

In addition, in cooperation with UN-Women, UNODC published the Statistical framework for measuring the gender-related killing of women and girls (also referred to as “femicide/feminicide”), which identifies a typology of gender-related killings of women and girls and the list of variables that can be used to identify and count the various types of such killings. 

Organizations that work directly with underserved women, survivors and communities gain valuable insights into effective strategies for addressing violence against women and girls. The UN Trust Fund systematically captures, curates and shares this practice-based knowledge and experience so that all can benefit. This occurs through one-on-one communications with grantee partners, learning exchanges, independent evaluations, thematic knowledge products co-produced with grantee partners, webinars and knowledge cafés.

Key data collection activities initiated during the reporting period include:

• An annual organizational survey among active grantee partners in addition to an annual partner survey introduced by the UN Trust Fund in 2021 to monitor the views of key partners (such as UN agencies, donors, other women’s funds, academic/research institutions and other CSO and WRO partners).
• In 2022, the UN Trust Fund launched SHINE, an online platform developed in collaboration with the Spotlight Initiative, which serves as a knowledge hub for civil society and women’s rights organizations, UN agencies, academics, researchers, practitioners, donors, and the private sector to co-create and amplify evidence-based knowledge that advances the shared goal of ending violence against women and girls.

The UN Trust Fund expands the global knowledge base by curating practice-based knowledge from the initiatives it supports, in co-creation with grantee partners. Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund co-produced with civil society organizations a total of 34 knowledge products to codify the practice-based knowledge and learnings of grantee partners, whilst 79 final, external evaluations of grantee initiatives were produced with the support of the UN Trust Fund during this time. 

Finally, the UN Trust Fund also supports grantee partners’ capabilities to generate data and knowledge by providing dedicated funding and delivering tailored trainings and technical support. The eight grants awarded under the ACT programme in 2024 included, for the first time, a specific budget allocation for practice-based knowledge and learnings. An average of 59% of active grantee partners between 2021 and 2024 reported having an ability to produce knowledge or learning on ending violence against women programming with UN Trust Fund support.

IOM developed the Intersectional Gender Analysis (IGA) toolkit in 2024, which aims to provide practical guidance to apply intersectional gender analysis in their work across different contexts and thematic areas. The toolkit includes guidance on safely collecting and utilizing data on violence, exploitation and abuse. IOM is currently piloting the toolkit in Afghanistan, Costa Rica, South Sudan and Ukraine. The piloting involves GBV technical leads in each country office to ensure protection mainstreaming and clear safe referrals of GBV. Moreover, GBV specialists' involvement adds value to reduce risks of overlooking inequalities and of causing harm, as well as to assure upholding human rights for women, girls and vulnerable groups to GBV.    

In 2020, IOM global GBV support team and Displacement tracking matrix developed tools, guidance and training to strengthen standards for safe and ethical GBV data collection in emergencies. Since 2021 IOM have been rolling this training out across DTM teams.  

In 2023, through the support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, IOM developed the study on Gendered Reintegration Experiences and Gender-Sensitive/Responsive/Transformative Approached to Reintegration Assistance. The study examines GBV as it affects women's reintegration and offers recommendations for specialized services for GBV survivors. 

In 2023, supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, IOM published the Global Report - Mapping and Research to Strengthen Protection and Assistance Measures for Migrants with diverse SOGIESC, highlighting protection risks and vulnerabilities, including GBV, as well as key assistance measures for migrants with diverse SOGIESC.  

Gathering data and evidence on VAWG is vital for gaining insight into the scope, nature, severity and frequency of the different forms of violence experienced by women globally. This data can also help to shed light on who is at highest risk, identify perpetrators, locate hotspots, and reveal the myriad consequences of this violence for individuals, families, communities and societies. This evidence also helps to understand whether survivors can access existing support services. To get a full picture, UN Women supports the production of quality data from different sources to track progress against the SDGs, including prevalence survey data, administrative data, policy data, qualitative data and innovative methods and sources such as big data and remote data collection. In 2022 and 2023, UN Women supported institutions, governments, CSOs and academics to analyse, use and disseminate high-quality statistics and evidence on VAWG by working to increase capacities for the production of quality, comparable prevalence data on VAWG to track SDG progress; strengthen knowledge and data on femicides to support prevention and response interventions; increase the capacities of institutions to collect, analyse, use and disseminate high-quality administrative data on VAWG; and advance innovations to fill critical data gaps on VAWG. UN Women’s work on data and research also includes managing a comprehensive repository on government actions to address VAWG: the Global Database on Violence against Women. One of UN Women’s most popular portals, it receives more than half a million visitors a year.

Specific examples of UN Women’s work include:

Strengthened national statistical offices in 21 countries.

• Developed the Statistical Framework for Measuring Femicide with UNODC.
• Published the Global Technical Guidance for Administrative Data on VAWG to standardize reporting.
• UN Women America's & Caribbean Regional Office collected data using behavioural insights to develop evidence-based strategies to address TFVAW.
• UN Women Multi country office– Caribbean supported the increased availability of globally comparative VAWG prevalence data in the Caribbean through the first round of national prevalence surveys in Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname.
• UN Women MCO – Caribbean published the first studies on the Economic Costs of Violence Against Women and Girls in the Caribbean, in Grenada and Jamaica, and completed an additional ECOVAWG Study in Guyana.
• Research outputs included a costing study on IPV, big data analysis on VAW during crises (in the Pacific) and during COVID, pioneering studies on VAW in politics, violence against LGBTIQ+ people and measuring social norm change in Nepal. UN Women also supports national efforts to improve administrative data systems and is piloting the UN-endorsed statistical framework on femicide.

In 2023, FAO published the Status of Women in Agrifood Systems (SWAF) report. The report evaluates the limited existing evidence on GBV in agrifood systems and offers examples of successful strategies for mitigating, preventing, and addressing GBV. By offering concrete examples and identifying research needs, this report contributes to a deeper understanding of GBV in the agrifood context and supports the development of targeted interventions to mitigate violence against women and girls, particularly in rural agricultural settings.