Ending violence against women and girls: Global commitments, local actions

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) continues to be the most urgent and pervasive human rights violation, resulting in serious harm to individual women, families, communities, and broader society. While significant progress has been made over the last 30 years with strengthened laws, services, and prevention strategies, the world is failing to eliminate violence against women which persists at alarming rates, across the world with 1 in 3 women experiencing violence across their lifetimes. Yet, evidence of what works to prevent violence against women and girls is available.  UN Women’s Global Database on Violence against Women and Girls is a unique ‘’one-stop site’’ providing easy access to comprehensive information on different types of measures undertaken by governments to address various forms of violence against women and girls. The database is an official tracker to assess countries’ progress towards ending violence against women and girls within the SDGs framework and to identify where acceleration is needed in the last five years of Agenda 2030. This report presents the first comprehensive analysis of the Global Database on Violence against Women and Girls, which documents more than 7,500 national measures, as self-reported by 193 States. These include laws, policies, prevention efforts and victim/survivor services to prevent and respond to VAWG. While there is tangible progress among states around the world in adopting measures to address VAWG, gaps and uneven progress persist.