Data Collection, Analysis and Research

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Reliable, high-quality data is essential to understanding and addressing violence against women and girls. Without robust data collection, tracking trends, and measuring the effectiveness of interventions, policymakers and practitioners lack the evidence needed to drive meaningful change. Spotlight Initiative has played a critical role in strengthening national data systems, ensuring that governments and institutions have the tools to collect, analyze, and use data effectively. By enhancing digital infrastructure, standardizing methodologies, and building capacity, the Initiative has improved the availability of disaggregated, globally comparable data on violence against women and girls to inform policies, services, and advocacy efforts.  

The Initiative has supported the development of national data systems, training thousands of government personnel to enhance their ability to produce and analyze prevalence and incidence data on violence against women and girls. Since 2019, 1,151 national statistics officers have strengthened their capacity in this area, and 55 national statistics offices have developed, adapted, and contextualized methods and standards to generate national-level data. This has led to a significant increase in the availability of publicly accessible data: 

• 94 per cent of target countries regularly report data on intimate partner violence—an increase of 32 per cent since the Initiative began. 
• 78 per cent of target countries have publicly available data on femicide. 
• 86 per cent of target countries report on female genital mutilation. 

Strengthening digital infrastructure has been a key component of these efforts. In Mozambique, for example, the InfoViolência database, which tracks gender-based violence cases, expanded significantly with Spotlight Initiative’s support. The number of registered cases tripled within a year, reaching approximately 6,000 cases in 2022. Investments in training police officers, government officials, and other duty-bearers have ensured that data collection processes are standardized and effectively implemented across all target districts. 

Similarly, Spotlight Initiative supported the establishment and expansion of the National GBV Data Situation Room and Dashboard in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs Nigeria from the six target states in which the Initiative works to 36 states and Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Additionally, the SGBV Accountability Tracker was launched in collaboration with Nigerian Governors’ Wives Forum and the Child Protection Information Management System was also established. As a result, reportage has been scaled up to ensure that GBV data is well coordinated for strengthened policy making and improved national response to violence against women and girls. 

Spotlight Initiative and the government of Jamaica helped establish a new GBV victim data dashboard geographic information system, strengthening efforts to prevent and, over time, reduce the prevalence of violence against women and girls.  This Early Warning Awareness and Response System provides the security, health, and justice sectors with critical, up-to-date information on violence against women and girls, enabling stakeholders, including law enforcement, to map hotspots, conduct risk assessments, and (through heat mapping) develop predictive analysis for all parishes in the country. The data collected will inform policies, programmes, and the response strategies (of service providers), and support the development and roll-out of effective prevention programmes. 

Beyond national efforts, Spotlight Initiative has contributed to groundbreaking research and knowledge-sharing initiatives to deepen understanding of gender-based violence. By producing high-quality data and making it widely accessible, the Initiative has empowered governments, civil society, and international organizations to take evidence-based action in preventing and responding to violence against women and girls. 

UNFPA plays a pivotal role in data collection, analysis, and research to enhance understanding and response to VAW. 

One of its flagship initiatives, kNOwVAWdata, provides technical support and capacity-building for ethical and robust VAW prevalence studies. Launched in 2016 in Asia-Pacific, it has since expanded to Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The initiative helps countries collect and use data to inform programming and monitor SDG 5 on gender equality. 

In humanitarian settings, UNFPA leads GBV administrative data collection through the Gender-Based Violence Information Management System (GBVIMS), ensuring ethical handling of sensitive data to improve response efforts. In 2024, the UNFPA Humanitarian Response Division conducted an external review of GBVIMS, assessing progress and UNFPA’s role as a lead agency. 

Regional Data and Research Efforts 

• West & East Africa: In partnership with UNICEF and the Innocenti Center, UNFPA launched an operational study in 2024 to develop technical guidance for FGM and child marriage programming in humanitarian settings. 
• Arab States: Published "Voices from Syria" and "Voices from Sudan," providing qualitative insights into GBV in crisis settings. 
• Asia-Pacific: Supports VAW prevalence studies, ensuring ethical and robust methodologies. From 2021-2024, APRO supported national surveys in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia, and Vanuatu—with 32 out of 36 countries having conducted at least one study, and 12 with comparable data to track changes over time. In 2024, APRO and the University of Melbourne published research on technology-facilitated GBV in Asia, including in-depth studies in three countries. UNFPA also ran GBV data learning sessions in four countries in the Pacific under the Spotlight Initiative, hosted a GBV data course in Fiji, and developed the GBV Administrative Data Toolkit for the Pacific. 
• Latin America & Caribbean: Conducted the first regional qualitative research on child marriage and early unions (CMEU) in eight countries, in collaboration with Plan International, making the issue more visible. Based on this research, UNFPA and UNICEF launched an inter-agency strategy to eliminate CMEU, including the Allies for Children and Adolescents Free of Harmful Practices regional platform. 

Through these initiatives, UNFPA strengthens evidence-based policies and interventions, ensuring accountability in the global fight against GBV and harmful practices. 

UN Action has provided support and guidance, including to Senior/Women’s Protection Advisors, on the implementation of the Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Arrangements for CRSV (MARA), or similar mechanisms, where they have been established. UN Action is currently undergoing an analysis of the operationalisation of the MARA since Security Council resolution 1960 (2012) and conceptualising improvements to the MARA (or the MARA 2.0) to better fit the needs of a changing context.   

We have presented in-depth thematic reports on harmful practices, in particular witchcraft, female genital mutilation, and child, early and forced marriage at the Human Rights Council and used their recommendations in our advocacy with States. All reports emphasized that harmful practices are deeply rooted in gender inequality and patriarchal norms, violate women and girls’ human rights, and require stronger legal, policy, and coordinated efforts to be eradicated. OHCHR’s engagement resulted in moving from ad-hoc thematic reports to the elaboration of guidelines on child, early and forced marriage to guide laws, policies and interventions to tackle the practice, as crystallized in resolution 53/23 of the HRC.