London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

As the UK prepares to convene a new international coalition to tackle violence against women and girls, announced recently by the Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, there is a growing sense that we are at a crossroads. While gender-based violence continues to dominate headlines globally, progress at scale remains out of reach.

One in three women globally has experienced sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner – a striking figure that has barely changed in decades, according to the World Health Organization. This persistence is often framed as a failure of knowledge, but that is no longer the full story.

After more than 20 years of research in the Gender Violence & Health Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), we have stronger evidence than ever on what can prevent violence against women and girls. The more urgent question is this: if we know what works, why are we not seeing change at scale?

Part of the answer lies in the moment we are living through. Across many countries, hard-won gains in women’s rights are being eroded. The resurgence of far-right and extremist ideologies has made misogyny more visible, and more politically acceptable. Online, growing communities share extreme gender-fundamentalist views, including those within the “manosphere”, which is reshaping how young men understand gender, relationships and power, while “trad wife” content rebrands highly conservative gender roles as aspirational.  Violent pornography, harassment and abuse are no longer fringe concerns; they are part of the digital environments millions of young people grow up in across the world. Recent reporting around the Pelicot case, an appalling incident of organised sexual violence in France, has also illustrated how digital spaces can be used to discuss and normalise sexual violence against women. What was once unacceptable is becoming normalised, and national policies are struggling to keep up.

Set against a backdrop of structural and institutional factors, polycrisis like economic insecurity, conflict, displacement and climate change all intensify risks of violence against women and make support systems harder to access. In many settings, the services that do exist are under-resourced and women often lack real exit options from intimate relationships because of economic dependence, insecure work or the lack of safe housing or protection.

At the same time, funding for violence prevention is shrinking. Cuts to international aid are already forcing programmes to scale back or shut down, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This means fewer community programmes, fewer trained health providers and fewer services for survivors. And as support systems weaken, the nature of violence itself is rapidly evolving. Technology-facilitated abuse, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated deepfakes and online harassment, has introduced new forms of violence that existing interventions were not designed to tackle.

This creates a fundamental challenge: by the time rigorous research is conducted, evaluated and translated into policy, the nature of the problem may have already shifted.

We must also be honest about the limits of the current system. Violence prevention remains siloed across sectors, with no single point of accountability. Health, education, justice and social protection systems all have a role to play, but coordination is weak and investment is inconsistent. Short-term funding cycles undermine long-term change. And too often, political attention peaks during annual awareness campaigns or high-profile examples of violence against women and girls, without being sustained thereafter.

With just a few years left to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to eliminate violence against women (SDG 5.2), the gap between ambition and reality is becoming harder to ignore. At the current pace, those targets will not be met.

So, what needs to change?

First, we need to accelerate how existing knowledge is translated into policy and practice in an equitable way, and embed violence prevention across systems, rather than treating it as a standalone issue. At the GVHC, we will be continuing efforts to make the field of violence against women and girls more equitable. Too often, we see research agendas, funding decisions and solutions shaped far from the communities most affected. We must invest in and elevate the voices of those living and working within these contexts.

Second, we need sustained investment in prevention and strengthening services for response, even in times of funding constraints. Cutting investment now does not save money; it defers and multiplies the cost - socially, economically and across generations.

And finally, we need to confront the political and ideological forces that are undermining progress. Violence against women is not only a public health issue. It is a question of power. Without addressing the norms and systems that sustain inequality, technical solutions will always fall short.

As we mark 20 years of research at the GVHC, we remain hopeful. Violence against women is preventable – rigorous research has shown how violence can be reduced in communities, couples and across generations. Now we must move from important but fragmented progress to systemic change and commit to prioritising new evidence and policy engagement to support this change at the scale this crisis demands.