Prevention, Including Awareness Raising and Advocacy

Ending violence against women and girls requires transforming the social norms, attitudes, and power relations that drive it. Spotlight Initiative implements evidence-based, whole-of-society prevention approaches that engage a range of stakeholders, including communities, schools, traditional and religious leaders, men and boys, to promote gender-equitable norms and behaviours.

In 2025, in Ecuador, the Initiative’s prevention campaigns promoting non-violent masculinities reached approximately 2 million people, contributing to increased public awareness of gender equality and GBV. In Uganda, nearly 27,000 community members were mobilized through the SASA! Together model, with reported shifts in community attitudes toward GBV. 

In Sierra Leone, the rollout of life skills curricula reached 72,000 learners nationwide, contributing to the integration of GBV prevention across the education sector. Through the Initiative's support, teachers were trained across 80 schools to deliver the Child and Adolescent Health and Life Skills (CAHLS) curriculum. Learners engaged with structured content on GBV prevention, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and gender norms, strengthening their knowledge, skills and agency.

In Zambia, with the Initiative’s support, 400 trained teachers reached over 24,000 learners through the Connect with Respect methodology, while the Initiative engaged faith and traditional leaders in gender-transformative training, resulting in public commitments to eradicate GBV. At the global level, the Initiative’s #WithHer campaign generated approximately 28.7 million social media views and impressions, an 86 per cent increase from 2024, reaching mainstream audiences with behaviour change messaging on masculinity, image-based sexual violence, and gender equality.

Prevention programming that engages diverse actors across multiple levels of society, from communities and schools to digital platforms and global campaigns, generates the mutually reinforcing shifts in norms and behaviours that siloed, single-sector approaches cannot achieve. 

In 2025, UN Women significantly expanded evidence-based prevention and advocacy to address the root causes of violence against women and girls. Building on the RESPECT framework, prevention efforts were scaled and adapted across regions, including Latin America and the Caribbean, and reinforced through the rollout of an updated RESPECT 2.0 framework, integrating new evidence, humanitarian applications and intersectional risk mitigation approaches. 

UN Women supported 93 countries to develop or implement prevention strategies and action plans, alongside the development of a dedicated global prevention strategy positioning prevention as a central pillar across normative, coordination and operational work. 

Capacity-building efforts included a regional Training of Trainers in West and Central Africa, equipping stakeholders from 15 countries (with reach across 24 countries) to implement evidence-based prevention programming. The RESPECT Framework was localized and adapted to Latin America and the Caribbean, integrating concrete policy examples from the region and building capacities of government authorities, public servants, and civil society to implement the evidence‑based interventions promoted by the framework in Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador. 

Community-based programming, youth engagement, and partnerships with civil society, faith actors and local institutions contributed to shifts in harmful social norms, including through 76 initiatives across 39 countries globally. Concrete country-level results included:

• In Malawi, 1,893 child marriages were dissolved, enabling girls’ return to school
• In Pakistan, over 80 stakeholders across six provinces contributed to the development of a National Prevention Action Plan

UN Women also strengthened its global convening and advocacy role, including through implementation of the EU-funded ACT programme supporting feminist movements and countering backlash. High-level advocacy engagements, including global events with over 150 participants, advanced commitments to safe work environments and accelerated ratification of ILO Convention 190.

Innovative approaches—including engagement with men and boys, private sector partnerships and storytelling initiatives—further reinforced prevention as a central pillar linking policy, community engagement and behavior change.

Overall, these efforts strengthened prevention ecosystems by connecting policy frameworks, evidence generation, community mobilization and global advocacy to drive sustainable change.

Since 2024, UNFPA has significantly strengthened its GBV prevention through a series of strategic and evidence-driven initiatives: 

• The organization undertook a comprehensive internal mapping of GBV prevention programmes across regions, which, combined with a global literature review on “what works”, has informed the development of new internal guidance on GBV prevention. This forthcoming guidance is designed to support country offices in planning, implementing, and scaling evidence-based interventions, while ensuring alignment with UNFPA’s Strategic Plan and its gender strategy Agency, Choice and Access and GBV Operational Plan, Flourish. It reinforces work across legal reform, social norms transformation, youth empowerment, and feminist movement strengthening.
• UNFPA has deepened the integration of GBV prevention into comprehensive sexuality education (CSE). This includes the development of a forthcoming  policy brief that leverages the potential of CSE for GBV prevention, alongside operational guidance that translates evidence into practical steps for integrating violence prevention intervention components,   gender-transformative approaches and trauma-informed approaches into CSE programming. UNFPA is also building the evidence base on how CSE contributes to preventing violence and the impact of CSE in improving access to GBV services.
• Through the Women at the Centre (WAC) programme, UNFPA community outreach efforts focused on adapting social and gender norms change theory into local contexts in five countries including Azerbaijan, El Salvador, Indonesia, Madagascar, and Zimbabwe.  Countries adapted UNFPA’s Global Social and Gender Norms Change Toolkit or other globally recognized prevention models like SASA! targeting women leaders, adolescents, caregivers/adults, and religious/community leaders. UNFPA additionally  implemented diverse TFGBV awareness initiatives through the WAC programme, such as media training and educational game kits in El Salvador and the development of public booklets in Indonesia. Madagascar and Zimbabwe utilized community outreach and radio campaigns during the 16 Days of Activism to address digital safety and online violence. These integrated efforts across the four countries focused on adapting social and gender norms change theory to local contexts to better protect women and youth in virtual environments.
• UNFPA, together with UNWOMEN, WHO and UNDP, has developed forthcoming guidance on the Dos and Don’ts of Engaging Men and Boys, emphasizing that such efforts must remain accountable to women’s rights movements, challenge harmful masculinities and power imbalances, adopt intersectional approaches, and avoid diverting resources from women- and girl-centred programming.
• UNFPA is piloting innovative approaches such as a digital redirection intervention to counter online sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) misinformation and gendered disinformation, linking young people to accurate information and services. Together, these efforts reflect a more integrated, systemic, and forward-looking prevention agenda.
• UNFPA ASRO technically supported the establishment of a regional digital hub on child marriage in the Arab region through the launch of the Regional Action Forum (RAF) website in 2025, which is hosted and coordinated by UNICEF. The digital hub hosts over 80 technical and advocacy resources, strengthening access to evidence, visibility, and cross-country learning among UN agencies, CSOs, iNGOs, academia, and women’s rights organisations.
• UNFPA Morocco supported the Aman Laki - an innovative digital solution for GBV prevention and response, providing women, especially survivors and those in vulnerable situations, with easy access to integrated support services. Through a user-friendly interface, the platform enables online requests, connects users to listening centers and specialized services, and facilitates referrals to multisectoral institutions, including pathways for support and economic empowerment.
• UNFPA Sudan strengthened the role of Women-Led Organizations (WLOs) as frontline GBV responders by supporting localization efforts through technical and financial assistance, coordination platforms, and increased visibility. This enhanced their capacity, representation, and influence, ensuring grassroots women’s leadership is better integrated into humanitarian, peacebuilding, and recovery processes.

In June 2025, UNODC delivered a presentation at a side event of the 59th session of the Human Rights Council on “Protection from Domestic Violence: Breaking Cycles, Building Peace”. The event explored domestic violence from different perspectives, with UNODC highlights its work on criminal justice responses and the preventive potential of the femicide review methodology.  

Through its advocacy, movement-building and community mobilization efforts in 2025, the UN Trust Fund convened 11 global advocacy events featuring 28 grantee partners, facilitated 20 country and regional networking events involving 68 grantee partners, and co-created 83 public advocacy and visibility platforms amplifying feminist advocacy and frontline evidence.