International Legal and Policy Development

In 2025, UN Women continued shaping global normative frameworks on EVAWG through sustained engagement in intergovernmental processes and policy platforms. Support to United Nations General Assembly and Human Rights Council processes, alongside engagement with the EDVAW Platform and its members from independent global and regional mechanisms, strengthened international standards, including emerging issues such as technology-facilitated violence against women and girls.

These efforts contributed to concrete normative advances, including 205 Member State commitments under the Beijing+30 Action Agenda, of which a third were made under the Zero Violence Agenda, and strengthened integration of gender equality considerations in 45% of General Assembly and 82% of Human Rights Council resolutions. UN Women also contributed to the adoption of the African Union Convention on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls, reinforcing global and regional legal frameworks.

Partnerships with regional bodies, justice networks and civil society further supported the development of investigative standards and strengthened implementation of human rights frameworks addressing violence against women. Through the EU-funded ACT programme, 179 women’s rights organizations helped shape the outcomes of 20 global and regional normative and policy processes on ending violence against women and girls, strengthening accountability and service delivery through amplified feminist advocacy.

Overall, these efforts reinforced international norms and standards, ensured continued global commitment to advancing EVAWG agendas, and strengthened the coherence and responsiveness of policy frameworks to emerging and evolving forms of violence, including through an analytical review of latest global and regional normative developments on technology-facilitated violence against women and girls. 

UNFPA has been actively involved in advancing, implementing, and operationalizing the Belem do Para Convention’s agenda to prevent violence against women through the:

• General Recommendation 5 on GBV and afrodescendant women.
• IV Hemispheric report on the accomplishments of the Belem do Pará Convention 

UNFPA ASRO, in partnership with ESCWA, UNDP, and UN Women, strengthened the availability and use of evidence for gender equality advocacy through the Gender Justice and the Law Initiative (GJI)[1]. In 2025, the initiative delivered an updated, comprehensive legal mapping across 16 Arab States, reflecting recent legislative reforms and alignment with international human rights standards.

• The issuance of a Fatwa in Djibouti condemning FGM was a key outcome of UNFPA ASRO’s sustained technical and programmatic support, which strengthened religious engagement and created conditions for faith-based leadership to publicly reject the practice. Key efforts included operating the Shamekhat network, capacity-building for Al-Azhar students, and a South-South cooperation study tour. The tour brought senior religious leaders from Djibouti to Cairo to engage with scholars from Al-Azhar and Dar al-Ifta. This peer-to-peer dialogue and exposure built trust and religious ownership, leading to the national dialogue and the subsequent Fatwa.

[1] https://genderjustice.unescwa.org/2025/Index.aspx 

The UN Trust Fund has played a key role in elevating women's rights organizations (WRO) leadership in key international human rights and public advocacy spaces throughout 2025. For instance, at the fifty-ninth session of the Human Rights Council, it co-hosted the side event “Voices of Resilience from the Frontlines: Advancing Efforts to End Violence against Women and Girls in the Context of Backlash” with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Women Geneva Office. This event brought together more than 90 feminist leaders, United Nations officials and Member State representatives. It amplified grantee partners’ experiences of adapting and sustaining their work amid escalating backlash and provided a platform to launch the 2025 Call for Proposals, a CFP that generated an unprecedented demand of 2.1 billion USD in funding from civil society partners.