United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
UN Women's work to end VAWG is firmly anchored in international human rights instruments and political commitments. These include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
UN Women supports Member States to uphold these commitments by aligning national legislation, policies, and programs with international standards. The organization plays a central role in global norm-setting spaces such as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), where it supports the negotiation and implementation of agreed conclusions on gender equality and the elimination of VAWG. UN Women also contributes substantively to the Secretary-General’s reports on VAWG and related topics, helping ensure that these issues remain central to the international policy agenda.
Through its Strategic Plan (2022–2025), UN Women emphasizes the elimination of violence as one of its core impact areas, promoting integrated, survivor-centered, and multisectoral approaches that are responsive to intersecting forms of discrimination and grounded in feminist values.
There are a number of internationally agreed norms and standards that relate to ending violence against women, including:
- The 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women does not explicitly mention violence against women and girls, but General Recommendations 12, 19, and 35 clarify that the Convention, as per Article 2 on non-discrimination, extends to violence against women, and also makes detailed recommendations to States to address violence against women.
- The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights recognized violence against women as a human rights violation and called for the appointment of a Special Rapporteur on violence against women in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action.
- The 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women was the first international instrument explicitly addressing violence against women, providing a framework for national and international action.
- The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development drew links between violence against women and reproductive health and rights.
- The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action identifies specific actions for governments to take to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls. Ending violence is one of 12 areas for priority action. In 2020, a major stock-taking UN Women report revealed that more than 80 per cent of countries (of 166 in total) reported that action to implement, and enforce, violence against women laws had been achieved in the previous five years, and 87 per cent of countries reported introducing, or strengthening, services for survivors of violence.
- In 2006 the Secretary-General’s In-Depth Study on All Forms of Violence against Women was released, the first comprehensive report on the issue.
- The 2011 Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence became the second legally binding regional instrument on violence against women and girls.
- The UN General Assembly adopts biannual resolutions on the issue of violence against women. The resolutions, first adopted in 2012, include the intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women, trafficking in women and girls, and intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilations. These resolutions are renegotiated biannually, and the most recent reports were submitted on these resolutions during the 75th session of the UN General Assembly.
- The UN Human Rights Council first adopted a resolution on accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women in 2012.
- In 2020, at the 64th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, leaders pledged to ramp up efforts to fully implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, including ending all forms of violence and harmful practices against women and girls.
UN Women is at the forefront of global efforts to eliminate violence against women and girls (VAWG), leveraging its unique triple mandate of normative support, UN system coordination, and operational activities. Through strategic partnerships, evidence-based programming, and advocacy, UN Women works to prevent violence, support survivors, and promote gender equality worldwide. Violence against women and girls remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations globally, impeding progress toward gender equality and sustainable development. UN Women's Strategic Plan 2022–2025 outlines a comprehensive approach to address VAWG, emphasizing prevention, survivor-centered responses, and the transformation of harmful social norms. The organization collaborates with governments, civil society, and other stakeholders to implement policies and programs that protect women's rights and promote their empowerment.
On behalf of the United Nations system, the UN Women administers the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women (UN Trust Fund), which provides core, flexible and long-term funding along with technical and strategic support services for civil society and women’s rights organizations across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. As the secretariat of the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls VAWG, UN-Women will coordinate system-wide efforts to end all forms of VAWG, including in advocacy for sustainable financing.
RESPECT women: Preventing violence against women (2019)
Training Manual on Gender and Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (2017)
Handbook for National Action Plans on Violence Against Women (2012)
Essential Services Package for women and girls subject to violence (2015)
Femicides in 2023: Global estimates of intimate partner/family member femicides.
Safe consultations with survivors of violence against women and girls (2022)
Handbook on gender responsive police services for women and girls subject to violence (2021)
*See also the resource links to numerous tools referred to in the narrative above and under specific measures.
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Response
UN Women leads global efforts to strengthen survivor-centered responses to VAWG through its support to essential services and multisectoral coordination. It plays a critical convening and technical role in promoting the Essential Services Package for Women and Girls Subject to Violence, developed in collaboration with WHO, UNFPA, UNDP, and UNODC. This package outlines a coordinated, quality approach to providing health, justice and policing, and social services for survivors. UN Women supports countries in adapting and implementing the package, building the capacity of service providers, and promoting accountability mechanisms.
UN Women also works to ensure that crisis response—including in humanitarian settings and during global emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic—integrates measures to prevent and respond to VAWG. It supports the development of national action plans, referral pathways, and inter-agency coordination mechanisms to ensure timely and effective service delivery to survivors.
Prevention
UN Women is a global leader in VAWG prevention, advocating for and operationalizing primary prevention strategies that transform harmful gender norms, challenge patriarchal power structures, and promote gender-equitable relationships. UN Women’s prevention programming is grounded in the RESPECT Women framework, developed with WHO and other partners. The framework outlines seven evidence-based strategies: Relationship skills strengthened; Empowerment of women; Services ensured; Poverty reduced; Environments made safe; Child and adolescent abuse prevented; and Transformed attitudes, beliefs and norms.
UN Women supports governments and civil society to design, implement, and evaluate prevention programs at scale. It fosters social mobilization campaigns, school- and community-based interventions, and engagement with men and boys to shift norms and attitudes. In particular, the organization works with feminist movements and youth-led initiatives to amplify transformative, intersectional approaches to prevention.
Research and Data
As the custodian of knowledge on gender equality and VAWG, UN Women invests significantly in strengthening the global evidence base to inform policy and programming. It hosts and manages the Global Database on Violence Against Women, the only global repository of measures taken by governments to address violence against women. The database enhances transparency and promotes peer learning by providing accessible information on laws, policies, services, and research.
UN Women provides technical and financial support to national statistical offices to collect and analyze prevalence data on VAWG through population-based surveys. It advocates for the regular collection of comparable, quality data disaggregated by sex, age, disability, and other factors, and builds capacity to use data in planning and budgeting. In collaboration with international partners, UN Women has developed guidance and standards to improve the measurement of VAWG, including through the Inter-Agency Group on Violence against Women Data and the UN Survey Module on VAW Prevalence.
Women’s Movements and Leadership
UN Women recognizes that feminist and women’s rights organizations are indispensable actors in efforts to end VAWG. Through the ACT for Feminist Movements programme, UN Women provides long-term, flexible funding and capacity-building support to women-led organizations and networks, particularly those working at the grassroots level.
ACT supports advocacy, coalition-building, knowledge generation, and service provision by feminist movements, enabling them to influence laws and policies, hold duty-bearers accountable, and mobilize communities. UN Women also facilitates platforms for movement-building, such as the Generation Equality Action Coalitions, ensuring that women’s voices are central in decision-making spaces at all levels.
Safe Public Spaces and Sexual Harassment
UN Women pioneered the Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Global Initiative—the first-ever global effort to develop comprehensive, multi-stakeholder approaches to preventing and responding to sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence in public spaces. The initiative is implemented in over 65 cities worldwide, working with local and national governments, transport and other service providers, women's rights organizations, and grassroots groups and the private sector to co-create solutions that reduce sexual violence in public spaces and increase women and girls’ safety and inclusion.
Interventions supported by UN Women include social norms programming (multiple levels), gender-responsive planning in urban and rural settings, , community policing, and the use of data to inform the development and monitoring of comprehensive programmes. The initiative promotes women’s political decision making, policy change, behavior transformation, and infrastructure improvements to ensure that women and girls can move freely and safely in public spaces without fear of violence or sexual harassment.
Harmful Practices: Child Marriage and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
UN Women addresses harmful practices such as child marriage and FGM as severe violations of human rights and forms of gender-based violence. The organization works at global, regional, and national levels to support the repeal or reform of discriminatory laws, advocate for strong enforcement mechanisms, and promote comprehensive services for survivors.
Through partnership with UNFPA, UNICEF, and civil society organizations, UN Women supports community-led approaches to change social norms, raise awareness, and empower girls and young women. The organization also contributes to the global evidence base on what works to end harmful practices, including supporting research, policy dialogue, and evaluation of interventions.
Trafficking in Women and Girls
UN Women’s approach to combating trafficking in persons, particularly women and girls, focuses on prevention, protection, and rights-based responses. As a member of the Inter-Agency Coordination Group against Trafficking in Persons (ICAT), UN Women ensures that anti-trafficking strategies are gender-responsive and survivor-centered.
UN Women works with governments to integrate anti-trafficking measures into national development and gender equality plans, supports the provision of legal aid and psychosocial services to survivors, and strengthens efforts to reduce the risks of trafficking in conflict, crisis, and migration contexts. It also advocates for addressing the structural inequalities—such as poverty, discrimination, and lack of access to education and employment—that increase women’s vulnerability to exploitation.
Technology Facilitated Violence Against Women and Girls (TF-VAWG)
Recognizing the rapid rise in online and technology-facilitated violence, UN Women has taken a leadership role in addressing this emerging form of VAWG. TF VAWG includes online harassment, non-consensual image sharing, doxing, cyberstalking, and digital sexual exploitation, disproportionately affecting women and girls—particularly journalists, activists, and public figures.
UN Women supports policy and legal reforms to recognize and criminalize TF VAWG, and works with governments, civil society, and technology companies to develop safe digital environments including the Global Digital Compact, an annex to Pact for the Future. It conducts research to better understand the scope and impact of TG VAWG, and raises awareness through global campaigns such as #SafeSpacesNow and #OrangeTheWorld.
