Support for Policy Development

In 2025, UN Women supported Member States in strengthening multisectoral national policies and action plans on EVAWG, ensuring they were evidence-based, costed and aligned with international standards. Across regions, countries advanced gender-responsive governance frameworks that integrated EVAWG into national planning processes and strengthened institutional coordination mechanisms.

UN Women’s support translated into the adoption of 98 EVAWG policies and action plans across 41 countries, with an additional 93 countries advancing prevention strategies and 59 countries strengthening survivor-centred service systems.

These efforts translated into tangible results, including 2 billion women and girls living in countries taking new steps to prevent violence, and 43 countries improving service delivery systems for survivors.

Policy innovation also linked EVAWG to broader development agendas, including social norms change, care systems, economic empowerment and political participation, contributing to more integrated, comprehensive and sustainable national responses.

This scale of policy support reflects UN Women’s sustained contribution to institutionalizing prevention and response frameworks, strengthening enabling environments and advancing coordinated national action to end violence against women and girls.

Robust legal and policy frameworks are foundational to advancing gender equality and eliminating violence against women and girls. When national legislation is aligned with international standards grounded in inclusive, consultative processes, and responsive to diverse communities, it strengthens protections against and response to violence against women and girls. Ensuring that laws and policies are implemented and upheld is critical to promoting tangible outcomes for women and girls.

In 2025, Spotlight Initiative programmes supported progress in advancing legal and policy reforms. In Sierra Leone, the programme supported the review of the Matrimonial Causes Act (1960) through a nationwide participatory process engaging over 700 participants, informing proposed amendments to strengthen protections against economic and psychological violence and reinforce women's rights to marital property, particularly for rural women. Another example, in Uganda, six districts enacted GBV and violence against children ordinances, embedding enforceable local-level protections across district governments.

UNFPA Algeria has made significant progress in strengthening its national response to GBV by developing and finalising Intersectoral Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). These SOPs establish a formal bridge between the Ministry of Justice, the National Gendarmerie (DGSN), and the Ministry of Health, creating a unified framework for prevention and response.

In Panama, UNODC developed a gender-responsive litigation manual for public defenders and delivered training to judiciary members on handling gender-based violence cases. 

UNODC provided advisory support to the government of Mauritania on implementing gender-responsive policing practices.  

IOM has significantly scaled up advocacy efforts around addressing Gender based violence, the safety of migrant women and girls, alongside enhanced risk mitigation of women and girls affected by conflict and displacement across the contexts we operate. As one example, in 2024 IOM co-authored a joint advocacy report with UNHCR and UNFPA on the risks facing women and girls at risk of being repatriated which outlined clear and actionable policy recommendations for the respective Governments involved and other stakeholders. 

Internally, IOM continues to advance the integration of Gender, GBV Risk mitigation, PSEA and safe and ethical handling of disclosures within all relevant institutional Policies, inclusive of Data Protection and Protection Mainstreaming policies. 

Supporting legislative and policy development is a core strategic priority of the UN Trust Fund, and one of the three outcome areas in its Strategic Plan 2021-2025, reflecting the critical importance of effective legislation, policies, national action plans and accountability systems to ensure survivors of violence have access to justice services and protection under fully implemented laws and policies.

As such, between 2021 and 2024, an average of 46% of initiatives supported by the UN Trust Fund per year included strategies to increase effectiveness of legislation, policies, national action plans and accountability systems to end violence against women and girls.

Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund supported 11,904 institutional partners that had increased capacities to develop or implement national and/or local multisectoral strategics, policies and-/or action plans to end violence against women and girls. In total 4,217 local, subnational or national government institutions worldwide increased capacities to design and implement institutional reforms, strategies and /or policies to prevent or respond to violence women and girls. 

For example, in Kenya in early 2022, the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) supported Isiolo County, one of its project sites, to officially launch its own gender policy to guide the mainstreaming of policies and processes to address VAW/G. The policy was drafted by CREAW and the Kenya Women Parliamentarians Association. CREAW also teamed up with local women’s rights groups to advocate for the policy’s adoption. The policy set out specific information on how the County Government can mainstream gender in all county functions to address a number of issues, including public participation and the representation of women and girls in all sectors; economic funds and equal opportunities for women; and a mechanism for gender-based violence prevention and response (such as safety nets, shelters and economic justice).

In 2022, FAO published the Practical guide on how to eliminate gender-based violence and protect rural communities through food security and agriculture interventions. This guide is designed to support country offices, FAO staff and strategic partners in the fight against any form of gender-based violence, facilitate the integration of protection issues in an FAO project cycle, and support the collection and analysis of data disaggregated by sex and other social variables for generating the evidence for policy-making and planning of gender-responsive and gender-transformative interventions. It provides the needed tools and promising approaches and experiences of the last decade used successfully to address GBV and eliminate protection risks in the field.  

Complementing strong and comprehensive legal frameworks, UN Women supports the development and implementation of national action plans (NAPs) for EVAWG that are critical for a coordinated approach to implementing national laws. The Handbook on multisectoral national action plans68 and the Handbook on Multisectoral National Action Plans to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls69 have been guiding UN Women’s work and supporting governments on developing responsive, evidence-based and well consulted NAPs to prevent violence against women and girls. Between 2022- 2023, UN Women supported 64 multi-sectoral strategies, action plans and policies adopted to support EVAWG. 

Specific examples of UN Women’s work include:

• Trinidad and Tobago: Led the creation of the first  costed National Strategic Action Plan on GBV (2023–2027).
• Fiji: Guided the National Action Plan to Prevent VAWG (2023–2028), based on consultations with 2,000+ stakeholders.
• Samoa: Developed a National Prevention Framework, integrating EVAWG into national planning.
• Cambodia: Provided technical assistance for its National Action Plan on VAWG (2019–2023).

To mark the 75th anniversary of the Declaration on Human Rights, OHCHR launched a campaign to encourage meaningful actions by Member States, with the dedicated aim to show commitment towards improving communities, nations, everyone’s human rights. As a result, 56 States have pledged on women’s rights and gender equality, with a strong focus on the elimination of gender-based violence.

UNFPA provides direct technical assistance to governments in developing, strengthening, and implementing policies for GBV prevention, response, and survivor support. This includes legal frameworks, national action plans, standard operating procedures (SOPs), emergency preparedness and response plans, and gender-sensitive policies across humanitarian, peace, and development contexts. UNFPA collaborates with ministries, parliamentarians, and other stakeholders to integrate GBV prevention into national development plans, social protection systems, and SRHR policies, including Universal Health Coverage. 

At the global and regional levels, UNFPA supports key international frameworks such as the Beijing Platform for Action, the SDGs, and UN Security Council Resolutions. 

Notable achievements include: 

• Nigeria: Strengthened partnership with the First Lady, leading to the first National Summit on Social Norms and GBV, which resulted in a national commitment to upholding the dignity and rights of women and girls. 
• North Macedonia (2021–2024): Supported a Multi-Sectoral Response Protocol, facilitated 11 bylaws (7 adopted), developed SOPs for Sexual Assault Referral Centres, finalized a survivor reintegration program, and supported the evaluation of the National Action Plan on implementing the Istanbul Convention (2018–2023), endorsed in 2024. 
• Latin America & the Caribbean: Advanced survivor-centred approaches in multi-sectoral response protocols across nine countries (Mexico, Peru, El Salvador, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Ecuador).