Advocacy & Lobbying
1 in 3 women and girls have experienced intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence or both
By responding to the needs of survivors, supporting their agency and investing in individuals, communities and systems,
we can end gender-based violence.
No single organization can do it alone.
UNFPA partners with governments, businesses, academics, civil society organizations – including feminist and women-led organizations, adolescent and youth networks, faith-based organizations and traditional leaders – as well as broader movements for human rights and social justice.
TOGETHER, WE
01
Build and share knowledge on gender-based violence and what works to address it.
02
Advocate to raise awareness, change laws and policies, and support their implementation.
03
Build capacities to respond to and prevent gender-based violence within systems and communities.
04
Deliver the right services at the right time to all survivors, including in humanitarian crises, fragile contexts and online spaces.
05
Make sure that sexual and reproductive health services and comprehensive sexuality education address gender-based violence.
06
Transform social gender norms and address structural inequalities to prevent gender-based violence.
07
Support the agency of women, girls and young people in all their diversity.
08
Respond and act to the impacts of GLOBAL HEALTH CRISES, INCLUDING Covid-19, climate change and environmental degradation, which heighten risks of gender-based violence and make it harder for survivors to access support.
Access the full video here.
Publication date: 16 October 2025
Twenty-five years after the United Nations adopted Resolution 1325, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is both a landmark in diplomacy and a study in unfulfilled promise. Its most profound achievement has been to force open a conversation about the gendered power structures that fuel conflict. But that opening is narrowing. Escalating wars, a backlash against gender justice and a collapse in funding now threaten to strip the agenda of its transformative edge. The WPS agenda remains an essential tool for women peacebuilders. Whether it survives as a force for justice depends on whether the global community backs its principles with the resources and political will to make them real. Without that, the resolution’s 25th anniversary will mark the start of its decline, not its maturity.
Working in the mine action sector showed me that traditional constraints are created to be broken!” says Dina Khuder.
She, Mahrosa Abdulmuneer, and Maha Jamal are Iraqi women working for the Shareteah Humanitarian Organization, an implementing partner with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in Sinjar.
Women are valuable players in mine action
Mahrosa Abdulmuneer is a searcher, who works to rid areas of explosive ordnance. To sharpen her skills, she has participated in every training course and capacity-building opportunity.
“As a mother of two kids, I believe that my work is contributing to providing safe areas for children to play around and live their childhood and make nice memories,” she says.
“I’m saving another life on my land”
Maha Jamal, a member of the Explosive Hazard Management Team, has enrolled in capacity enhancement initiatives throughout the last three years to advance her knowledge and skills.
She joined the mine action sector because of seeing the direct effect of mine action on people’s lives.
“I feel proud and happy when I discover and remove an explosive item knowing that I’m saving another life on my land,” says Ms. Jamal.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has intensified efforts to close the gender gap in political leadership across the subregion, with a fresh push to achieve at least 30 percent female representation in national parliaments and decision-making bodies.
Through the ECOWAS Female Parliamentarian Association (ECOFEPA), women lawmakers have launched a mentorship initiative to groom over 200 emerging young women leaders from West Africa and the Sahel, aimed at building their confidence, political skills, and readiness to participate in governance.
Themed “Strengthening Women’s Role in Political Parties and Parliaments in West Africa and the Sahel,” the session, held at the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja, marked a major step in advancing gender equality and nurturing the next generation of women in governance across member states.
This report was written by researchers from the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).
The report benefited from reviews by members of PHR staff, the PHR Advisory Council, and the PHR Board of Directors, as well as members of the OJAH Board of Directors.
The research team would like to recognize the strength and resilience of the survivors whose experiences and stories are reflected in this data, as well as the dedication of the health professionals who provided services and documented these violations—often at grave risk to their personal safety.
About Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) uses medicine and science to document and draw attention to human rights violations. PHR was founded on the belief that physicians and other health professionals possess unique skills that lend significant credibility to the investigation and documentation of human rights abuses.
In response to the scourge of sexual violence, PHR launched its Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones in 2011. The program works to confront impunity for sexual violence in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kenya, Myanmar, and Ukraine.
PHR has conducted research to understand the scale and scope of conflict-related sexual violence in various conflicts and contexts, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Myanmar, and Sierra Leone.
About the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH)
The Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH) is an independent and impartial organization dedicated to strengthening justice and accountability mechanisms in the Horn of Africa through evidence collection and preservation.
The organization’s mission is to deter war crimes, crimes against humanity, conflict-related sexual violence, and other severe human rights abuses across the Greater Horn of Africa. It pursues this mission by conducting documentation and investigations, advancing the environment for justice and accountability, preserving and analyzing materials, and supporting international justice and accountability actors and efforts.
Full report here.
This report advocates for thorough protection of human rights in the digital age, emphasizing the strength of constitutional safeguards over ordinary legislation. As digital technologies increasingly influence civil and political rights, online as well as offline, robust constitutional frameworks are essential to address new challenges such as unwarranted surveillance, censorship and data monopolies. Ensuring adequate constitutional protection helps anchor fundamental rights in an evolving digital landscape.
Click here to read the full report.
Publication date: 16 October 2025
Twenty-five years after the United Nations adopted Resolution 1325, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is both a landmark in diplomacy and a study in unfulfilled promise. Its most profound achievement has been to force open a conversation about the gendered power structures that fuel conflict. But that opening is narrowing. Escalating wars, a backlash against gender justice and a collapse in funding now threaten to strip the agenda of its transformative edge. The WPS agenda remains an essential tool for women peacebuilders. Whether it survives as a force for justice depends on whether the global community backs its principles with the resources and political will to make them real. Without that, the resolution’s 25th anniversary will mark the start of its decline, not its maturity.
This report was written by researchers from the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).
The report benefited from reviews by members of PHR staff, the PHR Advisory Council, and the PHR Board of Directors, as well as members of the OJAH Board of Directors.
The research team would like to recognize the strength and resilience of the survivors whose experiences and stories are reflected in this data, as well as the dedication of the health professionals who provided services and documented these violations—often at grave risk to their personal safety.
About Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) uses medicine and science to document and draw attention to human rights violations. PHR was founded on the belief that physicians and other health professionals possess unique skills that lend significant credibility to the investigation and documentation of human rights abuses.
In response to the scourge of sexual violence, PHR launched its Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones in 2011. The program works to confront impunity for sexual violence in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kenya, Myanmar, and Ukraine.
PHR has conducted research to understand the scale and scope of conflict-related sexual violence in various conflicts and contexts, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Myanmar, and Sierra Leone.
About the Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH)
The Organization for Justice and Accountability in the Horn of Africa (OJAH) is an independent and impartial organization dedicated to strengthening justice and accountability mechanisms in the Horn of Africa through evidence collection and preservation.
The organization’s mission is to deter war crimes, crimes against humanity, conflict-related sexual violence, and other severe human rights abuses across the Greater Horn of Africa. It pursues this mission by conducting documentation and investigations, advancing the environment for justice and accountability, preserving and analyzing materials, and supporting international justice and accountability actors and efforts.
Full report here.
This report advocates for thorough protection of human rights in the digital age, emphasizing the strength of constitutional safeguards over ordinary legislation. As digital technologies increasingly influence civil and political rights, online as well as offline, robust constitutional frameworks are essential to address new challenges such as unwarranted surveillance, censorship and data monopolies. Ensuring adequate constitutional protection helps anchor fundamental rights in an evolving digital landscape.
Click here to read the full report.
It’s been six months since the latest spark ignited mass protests in Iran — the death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa (Jina) Amini in morality police custody after she was arrested for allegedly failing to wear her hijab properly.
The outrage over her killing resulted in women-led protests. Their slogan “woman, life, freedom,” originally a Kurdish manifesto, has helped fuel the Iranian protesters’ demands for radical change.
Read more: Iranian women keep up the pressure for real change – but will broad public support continue?
The perseverance, bravery and determination of the Iranian protesters, particularly women and girls, have been heroic. Despite risks to their lives and freedoms due to a brutal government crackdown, many remain active in publicly articulating their grievances in a variety of ways.
In recent months, while some street presence has continued in Iran — for example, in response to the poisonings of schoolgirls in cities across the country — protesters are also organizing strikes, sit-ins, boycotts and publicizing their demands in the form of manifestos, charters and bills of rights.
In fact, a key distinguishing factor between the recent protests and the previous ones is that Iranians have been forming coalitions to advocate for important structural and institutional changes in support of equality, human rights, democracy and freedom.
Over the past two decades, the structures of social communication and public discourse have undergone profound transformations. The digital sphere has become a contested arena and a central space where identities are produced and symbolic and social meanings are shaped. It has also become a place where new subcultures emerge and existing hierarchies are often reinforced. Within this landscape, feminist and political movements have created counter-public spheres that enabled women and marginalized groups to break the monopoly of power over meaning, expose patriarchal violence, and build transnational networks of solidarity.
Such networks helped dismantle the ideological structures that sustained violence and victim-blaming for decades. The broader shifts in societal values unfolded alongside a surge of revolutionary consciousness across the Global South, which exposed the colonial and capitalist structures underpinning political and social life. This awakening was met, however, with intensified surveillance, repression, and the mobilization of power to resist change.
Digital surveillance cannot be understood simply as the use of technology by those in power. It reflects the transformation of the digital sphere itself into a disciplinary apparatus that reproduces colonial and neo-fascist modes of control. Once absorbed into a capitalist ownership structure monopolized by transnational corporations, the internet ceased to be a neutral space for knowledge or communication. It became an infrastructure of domination, where data and algorithms are deployed to sort, control, and exclude.
Algorithmic architectures reinforce hierarchies of language, gender, race, and class. Through mechanisms of digital moderation that reflect the logic of white, masculine, and capitalist privilege, feminist and anti-authoritarian content is systematically excluded. In this way, algorithms have become ideological tools that silence and erase voices deviating from the dominant norms enforced by structures of power.
Despite the progress made during decades of work by women’s rights organizations and democratic institutions, gender equality is still a long way off. There is a growing understanding that gender equality will only be achieved when men and women work together towards full gender equality and equal respect for the rights of all individuals and groups.
This paper presents nine policy and good practice recommendations to support diverse audiences in their work to include men in building a more gender-equal, peaceful, prosperous and democratic world.