Gender-based violence (GBV) is one of the most pervasive human rights violations of our time. Despite decades of activism, policy reform, and global campaigns like the 16 Days of Activism, progress remains painfully slow. Here we explore the scale of the crisis, the barriers to ending GBV, and the proven strategies that can accelerate change. It is a call to action: we cannot wait 300 years to achieve gender equality and end violence against women and girls.
GBV is Pervasive
Gender-based violence remains a global crisis: almost one in three women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime. In 2023, approximately 51,100 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members, averaging about 140 deaths per day. Child marriage persists; around 12 million girls are married before the age of 18 each year. Meanwhile, legal protections and responses remain weak. In 2022, only 14 per cent of women and girls lived in countries with comprehensive legal protections against violence, and just 63 countries have rape laws based on the lack of consent.
Evidence has shown that gender-based violence intensifies during conflict and crisis, where protection systems collapse, and risks sharply rise for children, especially girls and women. As noted in our Global Girlhood Report over the years, girls in conflict zones face significantly increased threats to their safety and increased risk of child marriage.
AI and Digital Technologies are Contributing to GBV
Current global crises, including climate change and conflict, and the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are intensifying violence against women and girls (VAWG) in numerous ways. This includes the deliberate spread of targeted disinformation that reinforces and intensifies misogynist norms that justify, excuse and normalise VAWG.
Generative AI has also facilitated the spread of image-based abuse and deepfake pornographic videos based on deceptive and non-consensual sexually explicit content. According to Sensity AI, 90 to 95 per cent of all online deepfakes are non-consensual pornographic images, with around 90 per cent of these depicting women.
The theme for the 2025 16 Days of Activism campaign to end GBV is “UNiTE to End Violence against All Women and Girls”, despite a lack of global comparable data to understand the nature and extent of digital violence against women and girls, available data points to the scale of the problem. Digital violence is not virtual; it has real-world consequences for safety, dignity, and mental health.
Behind every statistic above is a story. These voices remind us why we must act now and not wait.
16-year-old Shadibabiran* said:
They hit me in the face with a gun, kicked me in my chest and stamped on my arms and legs. Then I was raped by three soldiers. They raped me for about two hours and at some stage I fainted.
17-year-old Tamrea* said:
I was given to a husband at 12. I wasn’t happy to get married at that age… I wasn’t able to get used to what marriage was.
Redoubling our efforts to end and prevent GBV
It is 8 years since we published Shadibabiran and Tamrea’s stories. It has been 34 years since activists from Women’s Global Leadership Institute started this campaign and 17 years since the UN and many other partners around the world adopted the call – what changes have we seen? While legal frameworks and multisectoral approaches have evolved, the pace of change is far too slow. The world remains off-track to end GBV by the target date of 2030 set by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 5.2). At the current rate of progress, achieving full gender equality, which is a prerequisite for ending GBV, could take close to 300 years. How do we accelerate progress so that we are not still counting decades before change comes?
What we know works:
- GBV Multisectoral approach: ensuring comprehensive, quality and responsive services and legal protections: Strengthen coordination across health, protection, education, and justice sectors to ensure survivors access timely, rights-based services supported by robust legal frameworks that uphold accountability.
- Challenging Harmful Norms: through Engaging Men and Boys, Community Mobilisation, and Survivor-Centred Leadership: Transform deeply rooted gender and social norms by fostering inclusive dialogue, allyship, and community-led action that challenges power imbalances and supports survivor-led leadership. At Save the Children, proven community engagement tools such as Choices, Voices and Promises, the Community Action Cycle, and Safe Families strengthen collective action by equipping communities, men and boys, and local leaders to critically reflect on norms, build accountability, and drive sustained change.
- Empowering Women and Girls: Equip women and girls with the resources, voice, and agency they need to claim their rights, participate in decision-making, and lead change in their communities. At Save the Children, we recognise this as fundamental to ending GBV. Our technical guidance on preventing and responding to Child, Early and Forced Marriage and Unions and our Girls Decide tool for engaging adolescent girls on the move all emphasise the importance of centring girls’ and women’s voices, experiences, and agency in every step of our work.
- Increase funding and political will: Mobilise sustained investment and high-level commitment from governments, donors, and private actors to close the GBV financing gap and prioritise prevention and accountability.
- Evidence-based programming: Ground all interventions in data, research, and survivor-informed learning. This ensures our actions are not only impactful but also tailored to real-life contexts and scalable for lasting change. At Save the Children, we use our Gender and Power Analysis tool , an intersectional, child-friendly approach, to gather deep insights into local realities. These findings shape everything we do, from advocacy to program design, so that every intervention reflects the needs and rights of those we serve.
The movement to end GBV began decades ago, but the urgency remains. We know what works. Now, we must scale it. As leaders, advocates, and allies, we must unite to increase resources, strengthen accountability, and centre the voices of victims/survivors and communities at the centre of what we do.
At Save the Children, we are committed to leading this fight, standing with girls, women, and all children whose rights and dignity are threatened by violence. Our responsibility is not only to protect, but to transform systems, challenge harmful norms, and ensure that every child grows up free from fear and discrimination. This is my call to you all: let’s finish what we started. Let’s invest to end gender based violence - together.
