This week at the United Nations General Assembly, UN Women and the European Commission, in partnership with the UN Trust Fund, launched ACT to End Violence Against Women. The initiative aims to eliminate violence against women and girls globally by strengthening feminist movements, building coalitions, and driving policy change.

ACT will initially focus on Africa and Latin America—regions with some of the highest rates of gender-based violence (GBV).

This initiative comes at a crucial moment. Despite decades of advocacy following the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action nearly 30 years ago, the rates of violence against women and girls remain sobering: more than five women or girls are killed every hour by a family member, and 1 in 3 women globally has experienced physical or sexual violence. In Africa and Latin America, these rates surpass the global average. Last month in Afghanistan, women and girls faced new restrictions barring them from speaking or showing their faces publicly, in addition to being banned from high school and university simply for being female.

Despite the growing need, in 2022, only 0.2% of total aid and development spending targeted GBV prevention.

ACT’s focus is twofold: first, to strengthen the leadership and resilience of women’s rights movements at the global and regional levels, and second, to influence policymaking that can lead to systemic changes in how violence against women is addressed. The program will provide feminist groups with the institutional capacity they need to form intersectional alliances and access global advocacy spaces. This approach aims to develop a unified and shared advocacy agenda, bringing together new actors and multistakeholder partners to accelerate the fight against gender-based violence.

“Through direct investments in feminist movements, strengthening intersectional alliances, and coordinating a shared advocacy agenda, ACT will amplify women’s rights movements as they push for justice,” Kalliopi Mingeirou, Chief of Ending Violence Against Women and Girls at UN Women, told More to Her Story. “The future of women’s rights depends on the actions we take today to strengthen civil society, invest in feminist leadership, and safeguard our progress,”

ACT will work closely with the Spotlight Initiative, the world’s largest targeted effort to end violence against women, which is backed by €500 million in seed funding from the European Union. The Spotlight Initiative is on track to prevent violence for more than 21 million women and girls by 2025 by focusing on four key areas:

• Laws and Policies: Promoting legal reforms to prevent violence and address impunity.

• Prevention: Engaging men and boys to challenge harmful norms and promote gender equality.

• Response: Ensuring survivors receive quality services and holding perpetrators accountable.

• Civil Society: Supporting feminist movements and fostering collaboration.

ACT will work with the Spotlight Initiative to empower feminist organizations by strengthening their leadership and ability to form coalitions, particularly in areas where progress has slowed or regressed due to political and social barriers.

“We know we need stronger political leadership and greater investments to meet the scale and severity of the problem globally — and we know we need a whole-of-society approach that encompasses the social, cultural, and environmental dimensions to effect sustainable change. Spotlight Initiative is doing just that,” said Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed at the UN General Assembly earlier this week, noting that Spotlight “has been up to 90 percent more effective at reducing violence than siloed interventions.”

ACT will also tackle the growing issue of online violence, which affects 85% of women globally, with a high prevalence in Africa and Latin America.

The program emphasizes that a strong and independent feminist movement is the single most critical factor in driving policy changes, both globally and locally, to end violence against women worldwide.