Is the elimination of violence against women a realistic goal for the near future?

Abstract

As 2030 approaches, achieving Sustainable Development Goal Target 5.2, which aims to eliminate all forms of violence against women, appears increasingly unrealistic. Using the European Union as a case study, this Perspective argues that prevalence remains high, progress has stagnated, levels can be disproportionately high in some of the most socioeconomically advanced and gender-equal countries, and prevention efforts seem unable to reach younger generations. Together, these patterns suggest that prevention and response efforts, as implemented to date, have not produced sustained population-level reductions. Achieving measurable declines will require scaling evidence-based prevention with sustained political will and stronger accountability.

This Perspective argues that violence against women remains persistently high, in some of the most socioeconomically advanced and gender-equal countries as well. Progress has stagnated and prevention efforts seem unable to reach younger generations.

Introduction

Well into the 21st century, violence against women (VAW) remains a “global public health problem of pandemic proportions” (WHO)^1–6. Under the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention), “violence against women” (explicitly including girls under the age of 18) is understood as a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination against women and encompasses acts of gender-based violence that result in, or are likely to result in, physical, sexual, psychological or economic harm or suffering, including threats, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, in public or private life. “Gender-based violence against women” refers to violence directed at a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately (Article 3)⁷. VAW is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men, most commonly by current or former intimate partners¹. In this regard, the high prevalence of VAW both reflects and reinforces a fundamental inequality between women and men because, as the Istanbul Convention puts it, there can be no real equality while women experience violence on such a large scale⁷.

We are approaching 2030, the date set for achieving Target 5.2 (Goal 5) of the United Nations (UN) Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to “eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation”⁸. Unfortunately, available evidence shows that progress in reducing VAW globally is clearly insufficient, and that meeting Target 5.2 seems an increasingly unrealistic goal.

The lack of progress in reducing VAW is an alarming issue globally, including in high-income regions of the world. The European Union (EU) is a prime example of this. Despite the majority of its Member States being classified as high-income and performing well in global indices of human development and gender equality, the past and current prevalence rates in the EU demonstrate that VAW remains at unacceptable levels, which makes achieving Target 5.2 highly unlikely. To coincide with the 2024 International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) and Eurostat published the results of the latest survey on gender-based violence in the EU, based on data collected from 114,023 women⁹. According to this survey, 30.7% of women in the EU have experienced physical violence or threats and/or sexual violence by any perpetrator over their lifetime since the age of 15 (i.e., almost one in three, corresponding to about 50 million women).

This Perspective offers a synthetic and interpretive discussion of existing large-scale surveys and international statistical reports^1,9–13. Data sources were selected because they provide the most recent, population-based and internationally comparable estimates of VAW and related indicators. Countries or indicators with insufficient or non-comparable data were not included in the descriptive analysis. These sources also require careful interpretation given the nature of prevalence measurement. While population-based prevalence surveys are not a direct census of violence and do not yield an exact “true rate” for any country, they remain the best available approximation of the scale of the problem and a key benchmark for assessing progress. Both the EU survey report and WHO note that survey-based estimates are likely to understate the true prevalence, as some women will not disclose experiences of violence even under optimal conditions^1,9,12. Poorly designed or implemented surveys would lead to even greater underestimation¹. Concurrently, the EU survey emphasizes that survey data exhibits a substantially higher incidence of victimization compared to administrative statistics derived from formal reporting to police or services⁹. When sources differed in definitions or age coverage, comparability was prioritized over breadth, and implications for underestimation are explicitly flagged. Accordingly, the core prevalence indicators synthesized here refer primarily to women aged 15 years and older. This threshold is standard in the main global and regional monitoring frameworks. Importantly, high-quality prevalence measurement provides a baseline against which progress can be evaluated and trends interpreted.

In this Perspective, we compare prevalence levels and changes over time where repeat surveys are available. We also triangulate EU estimates with WHO modeled global estimates. Finally, we assess the plausibility of achieving Target 5.2. In doing so, we discuss whether observed trajectories and current policy implementation patterns are consistent with the required magnitude of reduction by 2030, as well as emerging new challenges.

Has progress in reducing VAW stagnated globally?

Available evidence suggests that progress in reducing VAW has stagnated globally, regardless of income region. In the EU, two large-scale surveys on gender-based violence, published a decade apart in 2014 and 2024, offer insight into whether progress has been made^9,10. The 2014 survey already showed that one in three women in the EU had been a victim of physical and/or sexual violence by a partner, a non-partner or both since the age of 15¹⁰. As Sirpa Rautio, Director of the FRA, put it: “a decade later, we continue to witness the same shocking levels of violence that affect 1 in 3 women”¹¹.

The proportion of almost one in three women having experienced physical and/or sexual violence by any perpetrator in the EU is broadly consistent with the scale suggested by the latest WHO modeled prevalence estimates published in November 2025, drawing on surveys and studies conducted between 2000 and 2023¹². These 2023 estimates are presented as the most reliable to date, reflecting expanded data, improved methodology, and greater availability and quality of underlying survey evidence. According to WHO’s 2025 report¹², the global lifetime prevalence of physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence is estimated at 30.4% (uncertainty interval [UI] 28.0–33.7%) among women aged 15 years and older, corresponding to approximately 840 million women. On this basis, the EU estimate of 30.7% sits at the upper end of current global levels. Notwithstanding the high prevalence levels of VAW observed globally and in the EU, it is important to note that these figures likely understate the full extent of VAW. This is because they do not capture forms of abuse that are explicitly included in the Istanbul Convention, such as psychological, coercive or economic abuse. Other under-measured forms of VAW include gender-based violence that is facilitated, amplified or extended through digital technologies and online platforms^9,12.

In terms of progress in reducing VAW, the WHO’s 2023 estimates, while not directly comparable with earlier estimation rounds due to expanded data coverage and methodological refinements, converge with the EU evidence in suggesting that reductions have been, at best, modest^9,12–14. According to the 2025 WHO report¹², the updated evidence indicates that the number of women subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence and/or non-partner sexual violence has remained largely unchanged for more than two decades, and that the modest improvements observed are minimal, too slow, and grossly insufficient for achieving SDG target 5.2 by 2030¹². In this sense, the lack of progress observed in the EU over the last decade appears to be consistent with a wider global pattern of stagnation. These prevalence trends define the central prevention challenge.

Despite decades of policy activity, prevention and response efforts have not, at least as implemented to date, generated sustained population-level reductions in prevalence. This does not imply that prevention is ineffective in principle; rather, it highlights a persistent gap between demonstrated intervention effects in specific settings and the scale, duration and equitable coverage required to shift prevalence at the population level, an urgent empirical and policy question addressed further below.

In the fight to prevent VAW, major international milestones include the UN 1993 “Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women”, the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the 2011 Istanbul Convention, and the 2015 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes Target 5.2 under Goal 5. However, UN assessments of progress toward Target 5.2 are bleak. The 2023 UN SDG report acknowledged insufficient progress in reducing IPV over the past two decades and warned that, without further action, countries will not achieve this target by 2030¹⁵. The 2024 UN SDG report did not indicate further progress, while noting that limited data may mask substantially higher risks among women with disabilities¹⁶. The 2025 UN SDG report did not include any mention of progress in achieving Target 5.2¹⁷.

From a global perspective, some scholars argue that VAW is a worsening public health emergency. An increase that could be explained by a number of factors including conflicts, humanitarian emergencies and displacement, economic and environmental crises, restrictive legislation regarding women’s rights, or the rise of technology-facilitated violence¹⁸. The available data on the most extreme and brutal manifestations of VAW also offer little reason for optimism. A 2023 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime indicates that, despite a global downward trend in homicides, the number of female homicides is not decreasing. More alarmingly, the report indicated that the number of women and girls who were intentionally killed in 2022 was the highest recorded in the past two decades¹⁹.

All the above suggests that Target 5.2 will not be achieved, even partially, until much later than 2030, the date currently set. For example, Ma et al. estimate that prevalence of IPV against women has declined slightly in recent years in low- and middle-income countries at an estimated annual rate of change of −0.2% (95% CI −0.4 to −0.03)²⁰. However, this result has been challenged on methodological grounds by Yount et al., who calculated that even under the most optimistic scenario consistent with Ma et al.’s confidence interval (an annual 0.4% reduction), it would take 173 years to halve the rate of IPV²¹.

Interpreting trends in VAW must also take account of changes in awareness and willingness to disclose violence. Gender-based violence is now frequently a subject of public debate and has been politicized, especially since the #MeToo movement. This shift in awareness may have encouraged some women (particularly younger women) to recognize certain experiences as violence and to disclose them in surveys or seek help from services when they might not have done so in the past. Such shifts in disclosure could, in principle, attenuate apparent declines in prevalence over time, meaning that modest reductions in the underlying risk of violence may be obscured by increases in reporting. Even allowing for such shifts, the available data do not suggest the kind of large and sustained reductions that would be needed to come close to eliminating VAW.

Against this background, the stagnation seen in the EU appears to be part of a global trend rather than an isolated regional anomaly. A growing body of research links women’s risk of violence to structural conditions such as poverty, economic insecurity, unequal distributions of resources and persistent gender inequalities, alongside other factors^22–24. At the same time, UN and regional analyses document how democratic backsliding, far-right and anti-gender movements are seeking to roll back gender-equality norms and weaken legal and policy frameworks to prevent and respond to VAW, including through contestation of the Istanbul Convention and other international standards^25–28. Implementation gaps are also documented through the Istanbul Convention’s independent monitoring mechanism (GREVIO), which assesses country compliance and has highlighted uneven prevention capacity, resourcing and coordination across Member States²⁵. This combination of persistently high prevalence and mounting contestation may be a warning sign of wider democratic backsliding that, in turn, risks further obstructing effective prevention.

High prevalence of VAW in countries with high income and gender equality: a major challenge for global preventive efforts

The persistence of very high VAW prevalence in countries with high levels of social and economic development, including those with the highest levels of gender equality, is among the most puzzling challenges in the field. This is the elephant in the room: a major problem hidden in plain sight that tends to be ignored and rarely confronted by scholars and policymakers. However, addressing this issue is central to evaluating why current efforts have not produced significant population-level declines and what would be required to do so. As a high-income region with several Member States ranking among the most gender-equal in the world, the EU provides an informative case study²⁹.

This region has also taken important steps to prevent and combat VAW. As of January 2024, the Istanbul Convention has been signed by all EU Member States, and ratified by 22 Member States. While the Convention provides a comprehensive regional framework, it has also become a focal point of political contestation in some Member States, which has slowed or weakened its implementation^27,30. Beyond the Convention, a range of legislative and policy measures to combat VAW have been adopted over the years, and ending gender-based violence is included among the European Commission’s priorities in its gender equality strategy. Most recently, the EU adopted Directive (EU) 2024/1385 on “combating violence against women and domestic violence”, the first EU-wide binding legal instrument specifically focused on these forms of violence³¹. The Directive establishes minimum standards on criminalization, victim protection and support, prevention, data collection and coordination, and requires Member States, among other things, to criminalize female genital mutilation, forced marriage and several forms of cyberviolence, as well as to ensure access to specialized, victim-centered services such as helplines, shelters and rape crisis or sexual assault referral centers³¹. Notably, during the legislative process, the proposal to include an EU-wide requirement to criminalize rape through a consent-based definition (aligned with the Istanbul Convention) was not retained, reflecting continuing institutional and political disagreement on this issue. Instead, the Directive included a number of specific measures such as education and awareness-raising to promote the central role of consent in sexual relationships. Despite this limitation, this Directive is widely regarded as the most advanced legal framework to prevent and combat VAW in the EU³¹.

Despite the combination of high socioeconomic development and recent legislative advances, the current extent of VAW in the EU survey remains deeply troubling, even more so when looking more closely at the prevalence levels in some of the most highly developed and gender-equal countries in the EU. Prevalence rates for women who have been victims of physical and/or sexual violence by any perpetrator (EU average 30.7%) are strikingly high: above 40% in countries such as Denmark (47.5%) or Luxembourg (45.4%), or even higher than 50% in countries such as Finland (57.1%) or Sweden (52.5%). Given that violence by intimate partners is considered the most common form of violence experienced by women^1,12–14, the extent of violence by non-partners reported in the EU survey is particularly notable. With an EU average of 22%, the proportion of women who report having experienced physical violence or threats and/or sexual violence by someone other than an intimate partner since the age of 15 exceeds 40% in Finland (47%) and Sweden (42%), and is well above 30% in Denmark (38%) and the Netherlands (36%). For sexual violence (including rape) by perpetrators other than intimate partners (EU average 12.9%), prevalence is alarmingly high in Sweden (34.9%), Finland (34.2%), and Denmark (28.9%).

The disproportionately high prevalence of VAW in these countries is particularly puzzling as the UN Development Programme places them at the top of the classification of “Very high human development” index (all within the top 12 countries in the world)³². What these countries also have in common is their high levels of gender equality. In the 2024 Gender Equality Index, countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Finland or the Netherlands scored above the EU average of 71 on a scale from 1 to 100³³. The highest Gender Equality Index score in the EU corresponds to Sweden (82), followed closely by Denmark and the Netherlands (both 78.8). According to the Global Gender Gap, Finland and Sweden are the EU countries with the best scores, ranking respectively second and fifth in the world in terms of gender parity³⁴. Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Finland are also the EU countries with the best performance in the Gender Inequality Index, ranking respectively 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th in the world³². This coexistence of high gender equality and high prevalence of VAW at the country level has been defined as the “Nordic paradox” and is still an open research question^35–37.

This paradox has triggered debate about what is captured by indices of human development and gender equality, and whether they sufficiently incorporate women’s exposure to violence, the persistence of patriarchal norms, and backlash against women’s autonomy. Moreover, the Nordic paradox highlights the importance of looking beyond national averages to examine how resources, opportunities and risks are distributed within societies. Recent analyses document persistent and often substantial wealth and income inequalities between social classes in the EU, as well as notable gender gaps in wealth and financial independence in most Member States^38,39. Economic insecurity, precarious employment, housing instability and gendered wealth gaps can heighten women’s economic dependence on abusive partners, constrain their ability to leave violent relationships and intensify conflicts over resources within couples, all of which are well-known risk factors for VAW. In other words, high levels of aggregate gender equality can coexist with deep inequalities and vulnerabilities at the household and community level⁴⁰.

Taken together, these patterns in some of the EU’s most developed and gender-equal countries raise a broader question for global prevention efforts: if such disproportionately high prevalence levels of VAW occur in some of the most developed and gender-equal countries in the world, what are the prospects for a substantial global reduction of VAW, especially in settings with lower levels of development and gender equality? After all, addressing gender inequality and reducing economic and social inequities are among the core ideas underpinning most VAW prevention policies¹. Consistent with this logic, the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development frames the elimination of violence against women and girls within Goal 5, which aims to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”, and makes this explicit through Target 5.2. Although there is still a long way to go before all legal, economic, and sociocultural barriers to achieving full gender equality for women and girls are broken down, substantial progress has been recorded in recent years in low- and middle-income countries¹⁷, including an observed global decline in sexist beliefs⁴¹. However, the prevalence of VAW in these countries has not fallen substantially, despite the growing implementation of gender-transformative policies that challenge discriminatory gender norms, and of laws and policies that support gender equality, facilitate access to employment and education, ensure equal pay and childcare, and promote political participation^1,17. The WHO 2025 report underscores the same message: despite growing recognition and policy activity, prevalence remains persistently high and reductions over the past two decades have been minimal¹².

This is not to diminish the relevance of policies aimed at reducing gender and socioeconomic inequalities, especially in regions where these inequities are more apparent, as such policies are important in themselves and are essential for the realization of fundamental human rights. However, the EU case suggests that advances in gender equality and social development do not automatically translate into substantial reductions in VAW prevalence. If some of the world’s most socioeconomically advanced and gender-equal societies are struggling to reduce VAW, it is difficult to be optimistic about rapid progress elsewhere without a clearer understanding of the barriers to effective prevention at scale. Identifying these barriers in high-income settings is therefore critical to informing global strategies and to assessing the feasibility of achieving Target 5.2 in the near future across low-, middle- and high-income countries.

Failure to prevent VAW among younger generations, and the emerging challenge of technology-facilitated gender-based violence

The 2024 EU survey reveals a lifetime prevalence of VAW already higher among the youngest age group (18–29) at 35% than the lifetime prevalence for women of all ages (30%). The estimated prevalence of IPV is higher among the youngest respondent group (35.8%) than for any other age group. The prevalence of physical violence or threats and/or sexual violence by people other than an intimate partner since the age of 15 is the highest among those aged 18–29 (25.6%). It is also striking that women in the youngest age group report higher rates of sexual harassment at work in their lifetime (41.6%) than other age groups⁹. Bearing in mind that the current EU survey shows similar age patterns in prevalence rates to those observed a decade ago¹⁰, these data suggest that VAW prevention is failing among younger generations in the EU, contrary to what would be expected after years of policy, public education and prevention initiatives in this highly developed region, despite its substantial resources and stated commitments⁴². The EU does not appear to be setting an example or leading the way in reducing the high prevalence of VAW among younger generations. In this respect, the EU faces challenges that are also evident elsewhere, as high levels of violence among young women are observed globally^1,12,43. The latest WHO report shows that 23.3% (UI 21.5–25.7%) of ever-partnered adolescent girls aged 15–19 years have already experienced physical and/or sexual IPV at least once in their lifetime¹².

WHO reports acknowledge that the prevalence of VAW would be much higher if it included cases facilitated by digital and other new online technologies and tools^1,12. Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) is an umbrella concept that encompasses forms of violence facilitated, reinforced, and amplified by technology. Examples include online stalking and harassment, hate speech and threats against women on messaging apps and social media, gender trolling, image-based sexual abuse, sextortion, and the non-consensual creation of sexual images of women using artificial intelligence, such as deepfakes^44–48. TFGBV provides a new vector that extends VAW into digital spaces and adds distinctive features to other forms of abuse. These include being easier to perpetrate, safer for perpetrators, more difficult for victims to escape, and being borderless and pervasive⁴⁷. Different surveys show that the prevalence of TFGBV ranges from 16% to 58%⁴⁶, disproportionately affecting women and girls^46–48, and the global prevalence has been estimated at 30.60% (95% CI [24.08, 37.12])⁴⁹. Thus, TFGBV can amplify the overall scale of VAW beyond what surveys capture. It is also a major emerging challenge, particularly affecting younger generations, as these new forms of VAW are expected to grow with the rapid development and increasing use of artificial intelligence applications⁵⁰. This emerging landscape has begun to prompt legislative responses, including at EU level.

The EU’s Directive (EU) 2024/1385 on combating violence against women and domestic violence is particularly significant in the context of TFGBV because it establishes EU-wide minimum standards that include the criminalization of several forms of cyberviolence (including the non-consensual sharing of intimate or manipulated images, cyberstalking, cyberharassment, and online incitement to hatred or violence), and strengthens victims’ rights to information, protection, support and access to specialized services³¹. As binding EU law, it is embedded in the EU compliance architecture through oversight by the European Commission and, where relevant, adjudication by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Yet its real-world effectiveness will hinge on timely and faithful transposition, adequate resourcing, and robust implementation at national level, alongside meaningful accountability of digital platforms for preventing and responding to TFGBV. In this respect, the Directive represents a significant step towards aligning EU law with emerging forms of VAW and recognizing that online and offline violence are deeply interconnected. However, the extent to which the Directive delivers substantive change will depend not only on Member States’ ambition in implementation, but also on EU-level monitoring and, where necessary, sanctioning of compliance gaps and political inertia.

The fact that younger generations of women are already experiencing such high levels of violence, and are increasingly exposed to TFGBV, is a major obstacle to the timely achievement of Target 5.2. The high prevalence of VAW among younger generations also suggests that past and current prevention efforts have not produced measurable population-level declines in this age group, in the EU or globally^42,43. At the same time, it underscores the urgency and potential of investing in prevention during adolescence and young adulthood, when norms and relationships are still being formed^42,43.

Conclusions and path forward

Achieving Target 5.2 is a challenge not only for low- and middle-income regions of the world, but also for high-income ones such as the EU. The 2024 EU survey revealed not only the high prevalence of VAW in this region, but also that progress in reducing VAW is stagnating, prevalence can be disproportionately high in the most developed and gender-equal EU countries, and prevention efforts seem unable to reach younger generations. Taken together with other international surveys, these data provide compelling evidence that VAW is universal, highly prevalent and persistent, and that, at the population level, it has remained largely unresponsive to prevention efforts as implemented to date^1,12,42,43. The available data indicate that achieving Target 5.2 by 2030 is not realistic, raising serious questions about its attainability in the near future.

VAW has proven to be a major social and public health problem that is difficult to prevent. Yet, the risk of VAW is not evenly distributed across individuals, couples, groups, communities or countries^51–55. Therefore, it is not inevitable and should be treated as preventable^1,12. A substantial body of evidence accumulated over recent years has identified a range of approaches with demonstrated effects on violence reduction, although the strength of evidence varies by intervention type and setting^56–64. The second edition of WHO’s “RESPECT Women” framework, recently updated on the basis of systematic reviews⁶⁵, organizes this evidence into seven interconnected prevention strategies: strengthening Relationship skills, Empowerment of women, ensuring Services for survivors, Poverty reduction, making Environments safe, preventing Child and adolescent abuse, and Transforming attitudes, beliefs and norms⁶⁵. A distinctive feature of the framework is that it rates the strength of evidence for each specific intervention separately in high-income and in low- and middle-income countries, reflecting the uneven development of the evidence base across settings. Among the approaches with the most consistent evidence of reducing violence in low- and middle-income countries are group-based workshops with women and men to promote egalitarian attitudes, empowerment training for women and girls, microfinance, interventions to support access to services (i.e., advocacy), economic transfers, whole-school interventions, parenting interventions, life-skills and school-based curricula, community mobilization, and workshops with women and men to promote changes in attitudes and norms. In high-income countries, the approaches with the strongest evidence of violence reduction are interventions to support access to services, labor force interventions (such as employment policies, livelihood and employment training), home visitation and health worker outreach, parenting interventions, and psychological support interventions for children who experience violence or witness intimate partner violence. Several approaches showing promise in one setting have yet to be adapted and evaluated in the other, reflecting an uneven geography of research investment^64,65. These strategies are not mutually exclusive, and RESPECT’s guiding principles emphasize that their impact is maximized when multiple approaches are combined across individual, relationship, community and societal levels, rather than implemented as stand-alone interventions⁶⁵. The framework also stresses that, in the long term, the ultimate measure of prevention success is a reduction in the prevalence of different forms of VAW at the population level, the very benchmark against which current efforts are falling short⁶⁵.

Much of the necessary knowledge may already be available, and large-scale, evidence-based interventions should lead the way^64,65. The challenge is how to embed them in coherent, long-term strategies that can reduce VAW at the population level, grounded in robust evidence on what works and in realistic strategies for building and sustaining political will, as well as how to evaluate whether such scaled implementation yields measurable population-level declines. Global analyses of health and multisectoral policies show that alignment with internationally agreed standards remains uneven and call on governments, including those in high-income settings, to revise policies and plans so that they reflect the strongest available evidence on what works to prevent and respond to VAW^66–68. In other words, proven tools exist, but they are not yet deployed at the scale, intensity or coherence required to shift outcomes at population level in most settings. Without the political will of governments and concerted international action to fund and support their long-term implementation, no substantial advances should be expected. For this reason, governments, institutions, and other actors should also be held accountable^18,69.

In this context, the main constraint is not so much technical feasibility or insufficient resources, but rather a lack of political will. High-income countries in particular are well placed to adopt and fund comprehensive, evidence-based prevention and response systems, yet policy analyses highlight that addressing VAW is often not treated as a strategic priority and that essential recommended services are still missing from national packages^66–68. Building the political will needed to scale up evidence-based VAW prevention therefore requires a combination of bottom-up and top-down strategies. Research on law and policy change shows that strong, autonomous feminist and women’s movements are among the most powerful drivers of ambitious VAW legislation, comprehensive services and accountability^70,71. Their influence operates through multiple channels, including agenda-setting, sustained advocacy, social norm change, and the monitoring of government commitments (effects that cross-national evidence links to measurable policy outcomes even after accounting for other political and economic factors)^71–73. This implies that long-term, flexible funding for women’s rights and women-led organizations, and for grassroots initiatives and broader social movements, should be treated as a core prevention investment rather than an add-on. At the same time, governments, especially in high-income countries, can use their institutional capacity to establish whole-of-government governance frameworks for VAW: fully costed national action plans aligned with the “RESPECT Women” framework, high-level coordinating bodies with real authority, integrated service models across sectors, and robust monitoring systems with public reporting^65,66,72. Expanding women’s substantive representation in decision-making and addressing VAW in politics can also help reshape priorities, as studies suggest that when women hold executive and local leadership positions they are more likely to advance VAW policies and specialized services⁷³. Coupled with international peer review and benchmarking, including through EU, Council of Europe and OECD scorecards, and full implementation of standards such as the Istanbul Convention and the new EU Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence, these steps can help high-income countries convert their resources and knowledge into demonstrable leadership on evidence-based, scaled-up VAW prevention, setting a concrete standard for others to follow^67,72.

For a problem defined by the WHO as one of pandemic proportions, VAW should be recognized as a first-class public health crisis that demands a first-class response. Big science, matching the scale and complexity of the problem, should be put in motion¹⁸. Large-scale and internationally coordinated research and implementation efforts have proven successful in facing recent public health crises, also in the form of a pandemic. Advances in theory, methodologies, and collaboration across disciplines will be needed to acknowledge the inherent complexity of this social and public health problem and better inform a new generation of preventive efforts⁶⁹. Perhaps the time has come for a similar international large-scale scientific effort to tackle the global challenge posited by Target 5.2 of eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls.

The issues raised in this paper are intended to stimulate debate and much-needed transformative thinking on how Target 5.2 can become a more realistic and achievable global goal, and what it will take for the promise of eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls to move from aspiration to reality.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Communications thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Funding

The author acknowledges funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/State Research Agency and the European Regional Development Fund (PID2022-137942OB-I00), and from the Generalitat Valenciana/Prometeo Program (CIPROM/2021/46). The funders had no role in the drafting or revision of this paper.

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.