Monday 5th – All Day (08:00 – 17:00)
Register here.
This participant driven event brings together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, survivor advocates, funders, and field-building organisations to explore how more inclusive knowledge ecosystems can strengthen prevention and response efforts.
While research has generated important evidence on preventing child sexual violence, valuable knowledge is also created through programme implementation, community engagement, survivor advocacy, and lived experience. Yet these different forms of knowledge are often generated, shared, and used in isolation. This workshop will provide a collaborative space to explore how they can be better connected to strengthen policy, programming, research, and practice.
Through facilitated dialogue, peer learning, practical exercises, and collaborative problem-solving, participants will examine how different forms of knowledge are currently generated and used, identify barriers to greater integration, and explore practical approaches for building more inclusive knowledge ecosystems.
Participants will also engage with emerging resources from the Safe Futures Hub, including the Living Systematic Review on child sexual violence prevention and the Practice-Based Knowledge Framework, as practical examples of approaches that support the generation, synthesis, and use of diverse forms of knowledge.
The event will conclude with a collaborative discussion to identify priorities and practical actions for strengthening knowledge ecosystems across the child sexual violence prevention field. Insights generated during the workshop will inform the development of an operational framework to support more inclusive knowledge generation and use.
Tuesday 6th – Morning Events (07:00 – 09:00)
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Despite growing recognition of the importance of evidence-informed practice, opportunities for researchers and practitioners working on child sexual violence (CSV) to build meaningful partnerships remain limited. This participant-driven networking event creates a structured space for early dialogue between researchers, practitioners, and early-career researchers to foster collaboration beyond the Forum.
Using a facilitated networking format, participants will engage in focused conversations to explore shared interests, identify complementary expertise, and discuss opportunities for future collaboration. The session is designed to help build new partnerships between those generating evidence and those implementing programmes, helping to bridge the gap between research and practice. Early-career researchers will also have opportunities to connect with more experienced researchers for mentorship and professional exchange.
Closed event.
The event aims to facilitate sharing of research by SVRI Grant partners and sharing impact of SVRI Grants with past andpresent SVRI grant award winners and with funders attending the event.
Afya na Haki (Ahaki) proposes a 75-minute evidence-to-action panel under Thematic Area 6: Using Research for Advocacyand Policy Change at the SVRI Forum 2026. The session will examine the persistent gap between research production andlegal or policy reform in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Drawing on Ahaki’s Litigating Reproductive Justice in Africa Programme, the session will present three country cases fromZimbabwe, Nigeria, and Malawi where research evidence-informed strategic litigation challenging restrictive reproductivehealth laws. Two cases have resulted in landmark court rulings, while one remains active. Together, they demonstrate howAfrican-led research, when effectively aligned with constitutional and regional human rights frameworks, can drive structurallegal change.
The panel will critically explore what forms of evidence courts find persuasive, the institutional conditions that enable litigation,and the limitations encountered when evidence does not meet judicial thresholds. Through facilitated peer dialogue,participants will identify barriers in their own contexts and contribute to a set of practical, transferable principles to strengthenresearch-to-action pathways.
The session will culminate in an open-access brief published by Ahaki, advancing global understanding of how research canmore effectively shape law and policy.
Tuesday 6th – Afternoon Events (13:00 – 14:30)
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A core challenge in humanitarian settings is meeting GBV survivors’ needs at scale while providing safe entry points for disclosure in places women and girls already trust. While GBV guidance emphasizes the importance of integrating response across sectors, in practice, GBV services are often only available through specialized service points with limited coverage. As humanitarian resources come under increasing pressure, integration offers an effective way to reach more survivors through services that are already part of day-to-day life.
Yet to be effective integration requires proper resourcing, local adaptation and technical support tailored to each entry point to ensure safe, quality, person-centered services, particularly in humanitarian settings marked by limited resources, service disruptions, displacement and instability.
WHO, UNICEF, IPPF and IMC have integrated GBV services into health, nutrition, and education interventions, generating valuable lessons on how integration can both improve survivors’ access to support and strengthen outcomes across these sectors. This side event provides an opportunity to learn from these experiences and explore how integrated service delivery can – under the right circumstances – play a complementary role to specialized GBV programming in humanitarian settings.
Breaking down Silos- Cross sectoral Dialogue on TFGBV
Hosted by SVRI and Same Side | Venue: Lotus 11
Partially closed event.
- Facilitate structured dialogue across the digital rights, e-safety, technology, and GBV sectors on TFGBV prevention and intervention.
- Identify concrete gaps, overlaps, and opportunities for joint working across sectors.
- Lay groundwork for more coordinated, cross-sectoral approaches to TFGBV prevention and intervention beyond the Forum.
We know too well that the struggle to end violence against girls and women is under attack. The global rise of authoritarianism is no accident. Coordinated anti-rights movements are deliberately dismantling and defunding the infrastructure of our movements, criminalising human rights defenders, weaponising digital spaces, deepening structural violence and fuelling armed conflict.
Hard-won gains are being rolled back. Holding the line is becoming the work. And yet, the movement is not only holding, it is pushing forward. Young activists are innovating, strategising, organising and leading. Anti rights movements are not only abundantly resourced, they are well coordinated, and require a coordinated and cross-movement response.
Join us for an interactive fishbowl discussion between funders, researchers and movement activists, hosted by Purposeful. We will hear from young feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements, tech GBV and FGM activists, and movements working across a plurality of crises. We will hear how activists are forging cross-regional solidarity across regions and will explore emerging research on the power and impact of movements. Together we will surface what is actually working, spotlight the scale, connection and reach of resistance and identify what the movement needs next.
Gender-based violence remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations in Asia and the Pacific, yet a persistent gap exists between global research and how evidence reaches and is applied by practitioners, civil society, and governments in diverse contexts.
Co-hosted by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the UN Joint Programme on GBV Prevention in Southeast Asia (implemented by UN Women and UNFPA), this workshop brings together the Southeast Asia GBV Prevention Platform, What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale (What Works II), and civil society partners to explore how global and local evidence can be captured, adapted, and translated into accessible, context-relevant knowledge.
Through practical group discussions and exercises, participants will share real examples of evidence application in practice, surface common challenges, and identify concrete opportunities for collaboration across research, practice, and policy. Experiences from Asia and the Pacific will inform a two-way exchange where knowledge flows between global evidence-holders and regional practitioners. This is a hands-on workshop, designed to generate insight, build relationships, and leave participants with practical ideas and new connections.
Tuesday 6th – Evening Events (19:30 – 21:30)
The Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) conference convenes change makers, practitioners, thought leaders and policy makers with GBV expertise from across the globe. With decades of experience and expertise in one place, the SVRI conference provides a timely opportunity for shared and reflective learning on how the PSEAH field can learn from the efforts and experiences of GBV actors and initiatives, and vice versa.
GBV and PSEAH can be understood as interconnected and overlapping fields that exist along a continuum of power-based harms. While distinct in scope and focus, both are concerned with preventing and responding to violence, abuse, exploitation and harassment rooted in unequal power relations, creating significant opportunities for shared learning and collaboration. That said, the two areas of work often operate with different mandates, frameworks, and implementation approaches. This session is an opportunity to move beyond siloed discussions and explore where synergies exist, where gaps remain and what each area of work can learn from each other.
This event will create a space for honest reflection, practical learning and dialogue between practitioners working in GBV and PSEAH across different settings, including humanitarian and development settings and those in transition.
Speakers will share experiences, expertise and challenges across a range of GBV and PSEAH themes, inviting reflections, practical ideas and discussion on trends and how to align:
- Social norms and prevention: Sustainable prevention of SEAH requires more than policies, procedures and risk management; it also depends on addressing the social norms, power dynamics and organisational cultures that enable abuse to occur. The GBV sector has decades of experience in social norms change and primary prevention. What lessons can the PSEAH field draw from these approaches to strengthen prevention?
- PSEAH capability strengthening: Effective PSEAH requires technical expertise, resources, leadership commitment and sustained investment. Organisational change is an ongoing journey; capability strengthening plays a critical role in helping organisations mitigate risks and apply policies and procedures, while wider social norms and behaviour evolve more gradually. What lessons can the PSEAH field share on approaches to capability strengthening? Policy and systems change: Policy engagement on PSEAH is still evolving, with efforts to strengthen laws, regulations and institutional frameworks often spanning multiple sectors, including safeguarding, labour rights, gender equality and GBV. Achieving sustainable systems change requires coordinated action across these agendas rather than a compliance-focused approach. What lessons can the GBV field share about influencing policy and driving long-term systemic change?
Purpose: To facilitate cross-sector learning between the GBV and PSEAH communities, generating practical insights and collaborative approaches to strengthen respective programme and policy work.
Closed event.
While global attention has focused largely on Africa, estimates indicate that Asia accounts for at least 35% of the global FGC burden, affecting approximately 80 million women and girls across 12 countries. In many Asian communities, FGM remains shrouded in silence, stigma, and denial; survivors seldom speak out, and the practice is often ignored or underestimated by policymakers, health systems, and international advocacy efforts.
UNICEF, in collaboration with partners, proposes to organize an advocacy meeting aiming to break the silence on FGM by creating a safe, inclusive platform for survivors, activists, researchers, health professionals and policymakers from across Asia and beyond to come together. Through facilitated testimonies, data-driven discussion and policy dialogue, we will spotlight why FGM persists in Asia — including discriminatory social and gender norms, social pressure, and growing medicalization — and explore concrete pathways to end it, including strengthened legal frameworks, community engagement, and survivor centred support services. We envision SVRI 2026 platform to provide a catalytic momentum and global attention to FGM in Asia, ensuring it no longer remains the “hidden” crisis — but one addressed with urgency, solidarity, and evidence-based action.
Closed event.
Join us for an evening drinks reception celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the founding of the Gender Violence and Health Centre (GVHC) at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
This special event will bring together approximately 70 invited guests, including academic and research colleagues, practitioners, policymakers, funders, and civil society colleagues to mark two decades of work advancing research, policy, and practice in the field of gender violence and health.
The reception will provide an opportunity to reflect on the Centre’s achievements, and to celebrate that this work has been built through long-standing collaborations with colleagues, partners, communities, and supporters across many settings.
Vegetarian, vegan, and other dietary requirements will be accommodated. Further catering details will be provided closer to the event date.
GBV has a significant social but also economic impact on society. The global cost of gender-based violence (GBV) is estimated to be at least $1.5 trillion annually. Studies estimate that Gender-Based Violence (GBV) costs countries up to 3.7% of their GDP. The private sector is particularly affected by those losses through decreased productivity, increased absenteeism or presenteeism, increased healthcare costs and higher turnover rates. Businesses can play a vital role in preventing and addressing GBV through workplace initiatives and as an additional funding source. However, so far businesses predominantly see GBV prevention as a social case. The private sector has yet to be convinced of the business opportunities that investing in GBV prevention presents.
This workshop looks at how numbers can present an effective method of gaining attention and highlighting the urgent need for prevention and response efforts by private sector. Participants will be presented with different cost analysis models, engage in thought-provoking discussions and explore opportunities to adapt models to the Sub-Saharan African context. Finally, the workshop will brainstorm innovative ideas on how to bring private sector, the banking system and policy makers together based on numbers that show that GBV is in fact a positive investment case.
Wednesday 7th: Morning Events (07:00 – 09:00)
Register here.
Despite growing recognition of stigma as one of the most harmful consequences of sexual violence linked to conflict, there is limited evidence on how humanitarian programmes can effectively address it. In 2022, victims/survivors of sexual violence and conflict affected communities consulted by the ICRC identified stigma as one of the most pressing yet least addressed challenges in humanitarian responses. In response, the ICRC co developed, with survivors and communities, a theory of change and a community outreach programme to address stigma. The programme has been piloted in Ethiopia and South Sudan, including in the context of the Sudan crisis, through partnerships with Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement actors.
From the outset, the programme embedded a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) framework designed not only to monitor implementation but also to generate practice based evidence. Inspired by InterAction’s GBV Prevention Evaluation Framework, the MEL approach combines a survivor informed theory of change, behavioural and proxy indicators, participatory mid term community reviews, a global consultation on the impact of stigma, a global webinar to help shape the research agenda, a learning exchange with partners, and an independent secondary analysis of programme data by an external research institution. While the programme is situated in conflict affected settings, many of the mechanisms through which stigma operates extend across the continuum from peace to conflict and back again, offering insights that are relevant beyond humanitarian contexts.
This workshop will present emerging findings, methodological challenges, and evidence gaps from the programme’s MEL process. Participants will critically analyse selected programme data, reflect on approaches to measuring stigma and social change in humanitarian settings, and contribute to shaping the ICRC’s forthcoming public report. By bringing together researchers and practitioners, the workshop aims to strengthen the evidence base for stigma focused community outreach and inform its adaptation and scale up in diverse settings affected by sexual violence.
Description forthcoming.
Wednesday 7th: Afternoon Events (13:00 – 14:30)
In 2017, the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) launched Spotlight Initiative – the largest global, targeted effort to eliminate all forms of VAWG and advance gender equality, a precondition to achieving the SDGs. With a €500 million investment from 2017 to 2023, the Initiative delivered significant results across 26 country programmes, 6 regional programmes and 2 civil society grant-giving programmes in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific and the Caribbean. Examining the sustainability of the Initiative’s comprehensive model and results is essential to the success of its second generation of programmes, which began launching in 2024.
Hosted by the United Nations – Spotlight Initiative, this event will bring together key partners within the EVAWG sector as well as present findings from the Initiative’s sustainability report explores the sustainability of Spotlight Initiative’s achievements and approaches two years after the closure of its first phase of programmes and draws on insights from virtual interviews and surveys that included 106 stakeholders from governments, civil society organizations (CSOs), the UN, the EU and other partners.
Spurred by Australia’s social media ban for under-16s, child online safety has become an urgent policy priority. Proposed measures range from the social media ban (Nigeria, Malaysia) and the prohibition of targeted advertising (Brazil) to device-scanning for child sexual abuse materials and grooming (EU, Philippines). It is long overdue that the tech industry be held accountable, but the proposals follow a troubling trend: They frame online harms as a stranger danger problem and rely heavily on tech-powered solutions. As a result, the solution space is overdetermined by criminalization and looks to platform companies, law enforcement agencies, and technologists as problem solvers.
As online harms becomes an urgent policy priority, it is imperative that interventions take an evidence-based approach rooted in child sexual abuse prevention. This workshop invites child sexual abuse prevention practitioners, advocates, and researchers to build a conceptual framework for contextualizing the role of technology in CSA and develop a prevention agenda for breaking cycles of harm, both online and offline. The workshop aims to upskill practitioners’ knowledge and confidence about the role of technology so that they can – and not tech companies – can drive the policy agenda. A networking event will follow for participants to continue the discussion.
Register here.
Globally, over one-third of women are estimated to have experienced some form of violence in their lifetime. In 2022, only 57% of women across 139 countries reported feeling safe walking alone in their neighborhoods. In Asia and the Pacific, the reality is even grimmer: 15–64% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner, a figure far exceeding the global average of 27%. Alarmingly, nearly 75% of women in the region have reported experiencing sexual harassment. This widespread violence is rooted in and exacerbated by intersecting structural inequalities, including patriarchal norms, systemic discrimination, and socio-economic vulnerabilities. Women face multiple, overlapping risks due to identities such as age, disability, migration status, socioeconomic background, gender identity, and sexual orientation, making them disproportionately vulnerable to exploitation, violence, and harassment. The region continues to report high incidences of intimate partner violence, child, early and forced marriages, unsafe abortions, FGM/C, and menstrual poverty, impacting up to two-thirds of women in some countries. Violence also contributes to severe health outcomes, including maternal mortality, miscarriage, premature birth, and perinatal depression.
Women’s economic vulnerability further compounds their exposure to violence. Nearly 41.5% of women in East Asia and the Pacific are engaged in vulnerable employment, and they undertake 80% of unpaid care work, surpassing the global average of 76.2%. These imbalances contribute to violence in public and professional spaces, and restrict women’s participation in decision making and leadership. Power hierarchies tied to caste, class, and religion intensify this crisis. In India, for instance, 54% of Dalit women report experiencing caste- and gender-based violence. Across South Asia, GBV manifests in brutal forms, such as selective abortions, honour killings, acid attacks, immolation, and dowry-related violence, often beginning before birth and persisting throughout life. In 2021, the Asia-Pacific region recorded the highest number of intimate partner or family-related femicides worldwide, totaling 18,100 femicides (17,800 in Asia and 300 in Oceania).
Recent events have escalated vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic, climate-related disasters in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and India, and conflicts in Myanmar, Afghanistan, and other localised regions have also led to increased displacement and heightened risk of GBV. These overlapping emergencies constitute a broader polycrisis confronting the region, in which climate change, conflict, disaster displacement, and economic shock compound one another and heighten GBV risk in ways that consistently outpace existing prevention and response systems. Rising ambient temperatures and extreme weather events are independently associated with increases in intimate partner violence. Disaster and displacement settings across Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and India have also been documented to elevate rates of child, early and forced marriage, as families facing drought, flooding, and loss of livelihood increasingly treat daughters’ marriages as a coping strategy; flood-affected districts of Pakistan and drought-hit regions of India have both recorded sharp spikes in underage marriage within months of a climate shock. FGM/C, known to affect atleast 80 million women and girls in the Asian region (UNICEF, 2024) , is similarly reported to intensify in some humanitarian and disrupted-schooling contexts, and the UN Secretary-General’s most recent report on child, early and forced marriage explicitly names climate change, alongside a global pushback on women’s rights, as an emerging driver of the practice. In most of these contexts, practices such FGM/C sits outside the scope of specific national legislation and criminal prosecution, and are rarely designed to withstand climate and disaster shocks, leaving them simultaneously under-measured and under-addressed even as evidence of their entrenchment and adaptation grows. These harmful practices remain poorly integrated into GBV measurement frameworks and into climate adaptation and disaster-response planning alike, leaving a critical gap between the compounding, lived realities of crisis-affected women and girls and the systems meant to protect them.
Another emerging form of violence is that of technology facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). Evidence indicates that women, girls, and people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are more likely to experience TFGBV, with 8 in 10 women experiencing some form of TFGBV. Given these new emerging challenges with regard to GBV, methods used thus far to measure, address and prevent GBV have inevitably fallen short of recording and thereby addressing these realities that have their roots in unequal power structures and dynamics; both in the private sphere as well as at the level of laws and policies that perpetuate existing systemic and majoritarian hierarchies of inclusion, citizenship, and belonging.
A Reproductive Justice framework to address GBV, makes the case for an intersectional and intersectoral matrix of oppression, which foregrounds structural and systemic issues, moving away from the experiences of individual survivors. Thus, centring the experiences of marginalised groups within the discourse of reproductive and socio-development politics; ensuring that no-one gets left behind. The proposed workshop aims to provide space for interactive dialogue, collective analysis, and collaborative strategy-building aimed at shifting the discourse and practice around GBV. To add to the discourse around prevention, elimination and measurement to respond to GBV, placing reproductive justice, structural accountability, and intersectionality at the centre.
The key goals for the workshop are:
- Add to the discourse around reframing GBV as a structural and reproductive justice Issue and contextualize the intersectional and cross-sectoral framing of GBV within broader social justice movements.
- Share, explore and draw lessons from effective and inclusive community based strategies and long-term engagements civil society to address a range of intersectional issues related to GBV, such as addressing economic violence, norm change, disability inclusion, working on masculinities, structural violence in institutions etc.
- Interrogate the region’s climate, conflict, and economic polycrisis as a compounding driver of GBV, examining how disaster displacement, climate-driven livelihood loss, and humanitarian crisis are heightening and reshaping risk across the region.
- Centre harmful practices, namely FGM/C and child, early and forced marriage, as core and distinct forms of GBV requiring dedicated measurement, legal accountability, and community-led abandonment strategies, and examine how climate and humanitarian crises are reshaping their prevalence, drivers, and risk patterns across the region.
- Identify gaps in traditional and existing gaps in data, indicators and measures of GBV and collectively develop, movement backed, praxis based and participatory research methodologies grounded in the reproductive justice framework to fully capture the spectrum of GBV, particularly centred around marginalized communities.
- Foster Cross-Regional Dialogue and Network Building – Provide space for participants to exchange learnings and co-create a roadmap for integrated GBV monitoring and prevention rooted in justice and equity, Resulting in strategic recommendations for advocacy and action.
In this session, conversations will be framed around evidence that exists on the impact of TFGBV on women, girls and WHRDs in Africa. The session will bring together activists working on TFGBV to specifically highlight the misconceptions that TFGBV is a new phenomenon and to show how women and feminist movements have historically documented the harm and applied different tactics to address the issue within their respective constituencies. Through practical examples, activists will highlight how structural oppression contributes to the manifestation of online violence. Women’s rights organisations will explore best practices to support the women’s movement and advance context-specific interventions to prevent and respond to TFGBV. Panelists will call on the funding community to strengthen their support for increasing the capacity of grassrootsled initiatives to tackle TFGBV, ensuring strong legal frameworks and effective preventive and response.
This session, led by refugee women’s organizations, will explore the intersection of gender-based violence (GBV) and displacement. Drawing on lived experience and community-based expertise, speakers will examine how legal precarity, economic insecurity, and protection gaps heighten GBV risks for refugee women and girls. The discussion will center survivor-led, culturally responsive approaches and highlight practical strategies for prevention and response. Participants will gain insights into how to meaningfully resource and partner with refugee women’s leadership in policy and programming.
Thursday 8th – Afternoon Events (13:00 – 14:30)
The Global Alliance for the Protection of Boys from Sexual Violence (GAPB) will screen two short films on boyhood, sexual violence against boys and gender norms, including one focusing on how boys can be subjected to sexual violence in Southeast Asia. The screening will be followed by a facilitated dialogue on how gender norms shape boys’ lives and relationships, contribute to harm and influence whether boys feel able to disclose, seek support, or access services.
Building on what is shown on screen, the discussion will connect the films to real-world responses and lessons from both research and practice. Filmmakers and directors from the region will join as moderators and panellists, reflecting on storytelling choices, intersectional perspectives on sexual violence against children and ethical considerations. They will also explore how visual narratives can affect the public and inform policy conversations, thereby increasing the impact and reach of data and evidence.
By bringing together people working across film, practice, and research, the session will encourage cross-sector learning on sexual violence against boys and masculinities, and also encourage participants to think through what this means for their work, how storytelling can help shift narratives around victimhood, gender norms and ideas of masculinities.
Register here.
This session invites participants to explore what it means for organisations in the violence prevention and gender justice sector to “walk the talk” by creating gender-transformative workspaces. It highlights a critical gap between external programme commitments to gender equality, safeguarding, inclusion and justice, and internal workplace environments, systems and practices that may continue to reproduce power hierarchies, discrimination, silence, and exclusion. The session will invite participants to examine how power operates through leadership, decision-making, workload, language, safety, accountability and everyday norms. It also stresses that workplace transformation must apply an intersectional approach, recognising that gender inequality intersects with other identities and exacerbates forms of discrimination and oppression. Through guided discussion, reflection prompts, and co-created solutions, participants will identify practical entry points for institutional change. Our hope is to move toward workplace cultures rooted in accountability, care, shared power, safety and justice, ultimately positioning workplaces as engines of equity and transformation.
Across the sector, many organisations are delivering powerful solutions that support survivors and prevent sexual violence before it happens. But, expanding these solutions to reach more people and communities brings new challenges from adapting programmes to different cultural contexts, to navigating stigma around sexual violence, to securing the funding and partnerships needed to grow sustainably.
This interactive workshop will bring together the experiences of organisations that have successfully scaled the impact of their work in different contexts:
- Mosaic, South Africa
- Centrs Dardedze, Latvia
Through short case examples and facilitated discussion, speakers will share what it has taken to expand the reach and impact of their work, including engaging communities on sensitive issues, adapting programmes to local realities, and building strategic partnerships.
Participants will also explore what it takes to fund and sustain scale, including insights into what funders look for, strategies for building funding models that support growth, and ways to maintain high-quality solutions while scaling.
Drawing on learning from across the field, and insights from Spring Impact’s research Preventing Child Sexual Abuse at Scale: What It Takes, the session will create space for participants to reflect on their own scaling journeys and exchange experiences with peers.
Thursday 8th – Evening Events (19:30 – 21:30)
Description forthcoming.
The GBV prevention field is navigating a critical moment amid funding reprioritizations that threaten women’s rights organizations (WROs) working to advance progress for women, girls, and their communities. The call is no longer only for more resources, but for better and protected funding — core, flexible, and sustained investments that enable advocacy, prevention, and long-term change.
To respond, the Southeast Asia GBV Prevention Platform, What Works, and The Accelerator for GBV Prevention are convening a joint advocacy event. Ahead of the session, the three initiatives are aligning priorities and co-creating advocacy messaging, reflecting a shared commitment to overcoming crisis through collaboration. This interactive space will showcase their joint process, share lessons from strategic alignment, and call for wider support through engaging advocacy. It will draw insights from other sectors, communications experts, and examples of donor leadership.
By “meeting the moment” together, the GBV field can rethink advocacy strategies, strengthen collective influence, and secure better investment in prevention. Core and sustained funding for WROs remains vital, as they carry much of the advocacy burden yet receive less than 1% of prevention funds. This joint effort seeks to inspire action, amplify shared demands, and model strategic collaboration for lasting change.
Friday 9th – Half Day (Morning)
Finance is a system of power. If that power can overlook gender-based violence (GBV), it can also be used to address it. Redesigning financial systems—the “plumbing” of how capital, data, and influence flow—can transform how we resource safety, equity and care. Inviting participants to co-design the “pipes and connectors” that make finance more responsive to feminist priorities and the realities of GBV in the region.
The session will be lead by a curated cohort of five partner organizations from across the Fos Feminista Alliance (Fundación Huésped, Feminoteka, BFLA, KMET and CDD Mex) to form part of the Criterion Institute’s Convergence virtual convening with the theme of using finance to reduce sexual and gender-based violence and conducting an action plan after the session to pilot some innovative financing interventions.
The objective of the session is in grounding how finance is used to address GBV and inviting participants to co-create what comes next. By turning aspiration into infrastructure, it demonstrates that systems can be redesigned — and are being redesigned — through feminist collaboration. Participants will connect across movements, markets, and regions to design actionable strategies and strengthen alliances to build financial systems that centre feminist principles.
Friday 9th – Half Day (Afternoon)
This event marks the culmination of a year-long process of in-country and thematic dialogues convened by the Southeast Asia GBV Prevention Platform. Since 2025, the Platform has engaged Women’s Rights Organizations, Organizations of Persons with Disabilities, LGBTQIA+ groups, and other civil society actors across Southeast Asia to learn from practice and weave collective priorities for GBV prevention. These locally identified priorities are woven into a regional agenda that reflects lived experiences, local evidence, and practitioner-based knowledge, while also highlighting urgent barriers and opportunities for collective action.
At the SVRI Forum, this event will highlight the regional advocacy agenda and connect it with global advocacy demands and commitments. Designed as an interactive dialogue, combining short presentations, small-group discussions, and plenary exchanges. The event will explore how regional priorities align with global agendas and map practical pathways for GBV practitioners to collaborate with national, regional, and global actors, including funders, policymakers, and multilateral and ASEAN bodies.
With SVRI Forum 2026 being hosted in Southeast Asia and the Prevention Platform as one of its co-hosts, this event carries particular significance. It is an important opportunity for regional voices to contextualize and influence global discourse, ensuring Southeast Asian strategies and commitments are recognized and amplified. Scheduled at the end of the Forum week, the session will synthesize key learnings and mobilize multi-stakeholder commitments to sustain momentum and strengthen investments in GBV prevention across the region.