ACT to End Violence against Women and Girls
ACT to End Violence against Women and Girls is a partnership between the European Commission and UN Women, in collaboration with the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls, to accelerate progress in ending violence against women and girls.
ACT supports feminist movements, coalitions, and women’s rights organizations to shape advocacy, influence decision-making, and drive collective action, with the ACT Shared Advocacy Agenda providing a framework for priorities and actions at global, regional, and national levels.
Violence against women and girls remains a pervasive human rights violation. It is rooted in gender inequality, harmful social norms, and unequal power relations. Conflict, climate change, shrinking civic space, and technological change are intensifying risks, including technology-facilitated violence.
Despite progress, implementation remains uneven. Survivors face barriers in accessing justice and support. Women’s rights organizations remain severely underfunded and face growing threats and restrictions. Yet evidence shows that strong and autonomous feminist movements are critical to ending violence against women and girls.
Since 2024, ACT has engaged more than 757 organizations globally and helped shape 20 global and regional normative or policy processes.
Three priorities for collective action
ACT focuses on three interconnected priorities:
- Bold investment in prevention and response to violence against women and girls online and offline.
- Strengthened financing, protection, and support for women’s rights organizations.
- Enhanced accountability, access to justice, and effective implementation of laws to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls.
Prevention cannot be sustained without investment. Laws cannot protect women and girls without implementation, accountability, and survivor-centred services. Women’s rights organizations cannot lead transformative change without flexible funding, protection, and participation in decision-making.
ACT advances these priorities through whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches that centre women’s rights organizations.
With 2030 fast approaching, ending violence against women and girls is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. ACT supports coordinated advocacy to turn commitments into action.
Results at a glance
ACT has:
- Worked with 60 civil society organizations and platforms to advance advocacy priorities on prevention, financing, protection, accountability, and access to justice.
- Helped shape 20 global and regional policy processes, contributing to legal reform, workplace violence and harassment, gender-based digital violence, and survivor protection.
- Strengthened leadership and advocacy capacities of 449 civil society organizations working on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
- Engaged more than 757 organizations globally in knowledge-sharing, networking, learning, and collective strategizing.
- Supported 179 women’s rights organizations and coalitions to participate in regional and global decision-making spaces.
