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)
This round table, co-led by Red de Defensoras Digitales and UN Women Mexico, brings together practitioners, policymakers, and researchers to explore multisectoral responses to technology-facilitated violence against women and girls (TFVAWG). Panelists will share findings from UN Women Mexico’s exploratory study on TFVAWG in three Mexican states, alongside Red de Defensoras Digitales’ advocacy work, including its initiatives within the T-MEC/USMCA framework. The session will also present the plan of action currently being developed by UN Women in cooperation with Red de Defensoras Digitales and Mexico’s Secretaría a de las Mujeres, built from collective listening exercises with survivors and civil society organizations.
This work comes at a pivotal moment: in March 2026, Mexico signed a first-of-its-kind voluntary collaboration agreement between the Secretaría de las Mujeres and the platforms Google, Meta, and TikTok to prevent and address digital violence – an emerging model of platform co-responsibility that serves as a starting point for deeper engagement. These experiences will ground a moderated conversation with global actors on advancing digital and AI governance: how emerging technologies, including generative AI, reshape risks for women and girls, and how regulatory frameworks and survivor-centered approaches can be strengthened across regions.
Closed event.
Reliable population-level data are essential to understanding and preventing childhood sexual violence, yet the field is at acritical inflection point following the loss of data systems and infrastructures . This convening will bring together a diversegroup of stakeholders—including researchers, civil society organizations, government representatives, and advocates—totake stock of the current landscape and chart a path forward. Building on nearly 20 years of experience with VACS and recentadvances such as the global estimates of sexual violence against children published by Fang et al. in Nature HumanBehaviour, the session will explore emerging directions for data collection. Particular focus will be placed on two complementary pathways: (1) development of a childhood sexual violence module for integration into existing population surveys (e.g., MICS), and (2) violence-specific approaches that allow for deeper understanding of the drivers, contexts, and consequences of violence. This convening will serve as an initial, field-facing dialogue to surface priorities, identify opportunities for alignment, and ensure that future measurement efforts are rigorous, ethical, and responsive to country needs.
This panel examines the evolution of REAL Fathers over more than a decade of research, adaptation, and implementation, exploring critical questions related to sustainability and scale. REAL Fathers (Responsible, Engaged and Loving Fathers) is a gender-transformative parenting intervention designed to strengthen positive parenting, promote nonviolent child discipline, and improve respectful couple communication among young fathers and their partners in Uganda. First developed and tested in Northern Uganda, the intervention has since been adapted, expanded, and endorsed by the Government of Uganda as a strategy supporting national early childhood development priorities. Organized around the scale-up process, this panel will trace the intervention’s journey from proof of concept through adaptation, proof of implementation, and expansion across multiple regions. Three focused presentations will highlight:
- how social norms research informed adaptation and alignment with national policy priorities for expansion;
- video testimonials of fathers, partners, and mentors collected through the Most Significant Change methodology; and
- evidence from implementing partners and the evaluation team on short-and longer-term program impacts.
The session will conclude with reflections on scaling interventions that seek to transform social norms and behaviors across violence prevention, gender equality, health, and early childhood development, highlighting lessons for sustainability, institutionalization, and continued learning.
Register here.
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.
Tuesday 6th – Afternoon Events (13:00 – 14:30)
This session will explore how data and evidence can drive more effective policy reforms to end violence against women and girls (VAWG) at scale. Despite significant global commitments and strengthened legal frameworks, progress in reducing VAWG remains slow, highlighting a critical gap between policy adoption and measurable impact.
The session will present practical, evidence-based approaches that governments can use to accelerate progress, with a focus on translating data into actionable policy. It will introduce two key initiatives: the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG) Index, a forthcoming tool which will provide a comparative, evidence-based overview of countries’ efforts to prevent and respond to VAWG and the Policies for Prevention Initiative, which synthesizes research on policy interventions proven to reduce violence beyond criminal justice responses.
Bringing together policymakers, researchers, and practitioners, the event will highlight the importance of whole-of-government, cross-sectoral strategies and demonstrate how data can inform priority-setting, strengthen accountability, and support advocacy efforts. The session aims to equip stakeholders with concrete tools and insights to advance more targeted and effective policy reforms to eliminate VAWG.
Register here.
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.
Register here.
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 the Australian 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.
Generating evidence on GBV is essential for improving programs, informing policy, and strengthening accountability. However, collecting, analysing, and sharing GBV data carries significant ethical, safety, and protection risks for participants, survivors, providers, researchers, and organizations.
This interactive, participant-driven session will introduce new guidance on safe and responsible GBV research and evaluation. Through case discussions, peer learning, and collaborative problem-solving, participants will explore how to ensure ethical research practices, identify and mitigate risks, respond appropriately to GBV disclosures that arise during the data collection process, and balance the demand for evidence with the duty to do no harm. We will use the guidance’s checklist to test whether GBV evaluations and studies meet specific requirements for primary, “higher-risk” GBV data collection.
The session will focus on real-world challenges such as informed consent, safeguarding digital data, survivor/victim confidentiality, data sharing, and managing emerging risks associated with technology and AI.
By the end of the session, participants will:
- Gain practical knowledge and skills on safe GBV data collection and management.
- Exchange practical lessons and innovations from different contexts.
- Develop strategies and practice using tools for strengthening data protection and survivor safety.
- Build connections with other practitioners and researchers working on ethical, survivor-centered evidence generation.
Register here.
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.
Register here – only 20 spaces available!
- 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.
Tuesday 6th – Evening Events (19:30 – 21:30)
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.
In its fifth year, the What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale (What Works II) initiative has generated significant evidence and practice-based insights from 12 countries on pathways to scale VAWG prevention, innovations to reach underserved groups and integration of VAWG prevention into sectoral programming.
This event will bring together the partners funded by the What Works II initiative, representing both the implementation and research consortia. The event will present synthesized findings and cross-contextual lessons spanning the initiative’s rigorous research and practice. Alongside presentations of the headline field-level findings, the format of the event will spotlight both innovation grantees, who have piloted creative new approaches, and scale grantees, who have successfully embedded proven models into national systems via mainstreaming and create space for direct engagement between partners and Forum participants.
By blending country level insights with field-level findings, the session will celebrate achievements, highlight practical lessons and provide critical guidance to shape the next generation of VAWG prevention efforts globally.
The What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale (What Works II) initiative is funded by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) through its Global Research and Technology Development portfolio.
Gender-Based Violence (GBV) has a significant social but also economic impact on society. The global cost of GBV is estimated to be at least $1.5 trillion annually. Studies estimate that 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.
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.
Despite significant investment in policies, reporting mechanisms, and response systems, and the tremendous gains made by the GBV community in tackling all forms of gender-based violence, the aid sector still lacks a shared understanding of what effective prevention of sexual exploitation, abuse, and sexual harassment (SEAH) means in practice. Much of the existing work remains focused on compliance requirements, awareness raising and training, and is rarely evaluated for its contribution to preventing abuse before it occurs.
This participant-driven session will convene practitioners, researchers, women-led and women’s rights organizations, UN agencies, and donors to explore practical and tested approaches to SEAH prevention across a diverse set of contexts, sectors and operational environments – many of which are drawn from effective GBV prevention methods and practices. Building on the foundational research and practices of RSH, and an ongoing ECHO-funded interagency initiative to develop a global digital SEAH Prevention Toolkit and Knowledge Platform, the session will share emerging findings and expertise from a panel of subject matter experts, evidence mapping and country co-design processes in Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Central African Republic, and Ukraine.
The session is designed as a participatory, collaborative learning space where panelists from Pakistan, Bangladesh, CAR, and Ukraine will share promising practices, reflect on gaps and implementation challenges, and collectively identify priorities for bridging the divide between GBV and PSEAH practitioners. This will be followed by an interactive “talk show” format session, when the panelists will be joined by donors to address topical themes and priorities, including how to address shared tension points, funding challenges, and implementing impact- and evidence-driven actions to advance SEAH prevention in practice.
The event will be chaired by Liz Pender, Global PSEAH Coordinator from UNFPA and Anna Gawn, RSH Technical Director. Presenters will include representatives from WROs, RSH and the UN from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Central African Republic. Presentations will be followed by a “talk show” format Q&A session, chaired by Alina Potts, Lead Research Scientist with the Global Women’s Institute at George Washington University. During this structured Q&A, panelists will be joined by a representative from ECHO.
This side event at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Forum convenes knowledge platforms, NGOs, specially locally led service-providing organisations and communities most affected by injustice and oppression to catalyse a more equitable knowledge ecosystem. Positioned in the lead up to the consultations shaping the “Commission 2048” this foresight session aims to reimagine how knowledge is produced, validated, and mobilised for scientific integrity, social and gender justice.
The session will begin with a feminist futures foresight exercise, inviting participants to collectively envision community-engaged, practice-based and justice-driven research in 2048 that informs a global human rights vision. This participatory approach centres the voices and lives realities of marginalised communities while identifying transformative pathways for the scientific community, funders, and practitioners.
Building on these insights, we will map the actions needed to help us realise these futures while navigating the politics, power and injustices in knowledge production. Participants will critically examine systemic exclusions in research design, authorship, and dissemination, particularly in relation to community-engaged and practice-based knowledge. The discussion will also explore actionable strategies to restore trust in science while enhancing accessibility, co-ownership, and relevance for communities and frontline actors.
By bridging epistemic divides and fostering accountability across sectors, this side event contributes to a shared vision for more ethical, inclusive, and impact-oriented research to inform the Commission 2048 agenda.
Register here.
UNICEF, UNFPA and partners will bring together researchers, advocates, survivors, community leaders, policymakers and development partners to advance dialogue and action on female genital mutilation (FGM) in Asia. Despite affecting more than 80 million girls and women across the region, FGM in Asia remains insufficiently recognized in global and regional discourse, with significant gaps in evidence, policy attention and investment.
This side event will provide a platform to amplify civil society and community voices, share emerging evidence and research priorities, and explore context-specific approaches to prevention and response. Through dialogue across research, policy and practice, participants will examine the drivers of FGM, the challenges posed by medicalization, and opportunities for stronger regional and South–South collaboration. The event will also highlight promising experiences from Asia and other regions, fostering knowledge exchange and collective learning to strengthen efforts to end the practice.
Aligned with the SVRI Forum’s commitment to advancing evidence-based action, inclusion and meaningful participation, the event aims to elevate FGM in Asia on the global agenda, strengthen partnerships across sectors, and catalyse greater recognition, investment and coordinated action to accelerate progress towards ending FGM and advancing the rights, dignity, health and well-being of girls and women.
Wednesday 7th: Morning Events (07:00 – 09:00)
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This interactive session at the SVRI Forum 2026 will bring together researchers, practitioners and funders working at the intersection of edutainment and violence prevention.
Through panels, case studies, and breakout discussions, participants will explore what we know about the effectiveness of entertainment-education approaches to prevent violence against women and girls and map out next steps in the field.
Topics will include iterating, rigorous evaluation, scaling models and digital innovation.
The session aims to strengthen connections across sectors and spark a longer-term community of practice around evidence-based edutainment for violence prevention.
Agenda:
- Panel from organisers (30 min): Sharing recent experience, lessons & research.
- Inspiration: Short show excerpt from Peripheral Vision International.
- Q&A panel with experts (30 min): Context, trends, inspiration, priorities.
- Breakout rooms (30 min): Scaling up, content design, building the field, the future of the field.
- Plenary & community building (30 min): Summarising insights and outlining a plan for a community of practice.
This side event will bring together civil society organizations, feminist funds and research partners to interrogate a central question: what can funding demand and CSO needs reveal about where the field of ending violence against women and girls is heading, and whether current financing models are keeping pace? Drawing on large-scale funding application trends and emerging foresight analysis, the session will surface ongoing conversations on structural gaps, shifting priorities, and underfunded frontiers, using demand as a signal of where change is being constrained.
This event will bring together complementary financing actors, civil society organizations and research partners to reflect on what this evidence means for collective strategy across the ecosystem. The discussion will combine new analysis of current funding dynamics with evidence from the UN Trust Fund’s three decades of grantmaking, connecting long-term impact with real-time signals of where the field is heading. The session will ultimately move the conversation from who funds what to how the system responds to demand, and what it will take to resource feminist movements at the scale and speed required.
Since early 2025, unprecedented reductions in humanitarian funding have triggered a rapidly escalating crisis for genderbased violence (GBV) prevention and response in humanitarian settings. These cuts have not only reduced access to lifesaving services for survivors but have also exposed longstanding structural weaknesses in the humanitarian system, including chronic underinvestment in gender equality, women’s rights organizations, and locally led responses. Evidence from humanitarian contexts worldwide demonstrates that funding reductions have led to the closure of safe spaces, disruptions in case management and psychosocial support, loss of specialized staff, and reduced access to health and protection services for women and girls.
This side event will bring together researchers, practitioners, women-led organizations, donors, and advocates to examine the immediate and longer-term implications of humanitarian funding cuts for GBV programming and survivor protection. Participants will explore emerging evidence on service disruptions, the adaptations and trade-offs organizations are making to continue operating, and the broader consequences for localization, accountability, and gender-responsive humanitarian action. The session will also identify priorities for protecting essential GBV services and sustaining women-led organizations amid an increasingly constrained funding environment.
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.
This event is a small gathering of funders and key stakeholders supporting work to address child sexual violence, hosted alongside SVRI Forum 2026. Over breakfast, we’ll come together for an open and hopeful conversation about the current landscape of CSV research and funding, key milestones, and areas where further support and collaboration are needed. This intimate space will offer an opportunity to compare notes, discuss challenges, share what is working, and think together about where the evidence needs to go next.
Wednesday 7th: Afternoon Events (13:00 – 14:30)
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.
Drawing on growing global evidence of the impact of TFGBV on women, girls, and WHRDs, this collaborative session will convene feminist activists, WHRDs, and funders responding to TFGBV in Africa to deepen and nuance understanding of the phenomenon and strengthen responses across the continent. It will explore how women’s human rights and feminist movements have historically documented and addressed these harms, and developed diverse redress strategies, particularly at the grassroots. Through practical examples, activists will demonstrate how structural oppression shapes the manifestation and impact of online violence; while women’s rights organisations will also share the best practices for supporting the women’s movement and advancing context-specific approaches to preventing and responding to TFGBV. The session will conclude with a call to funders to strengthen support for grassroots-led initiatives, including through capacity strengthening, robust legal frameworks, and effective prevention and response mechanisms.
Register here.
Across Asia, refugee women-led organisations (RWLOs) are the primary, and often only, responders to gender-based violence (GBV) in contexts where state protection systems do not exist or actively exclude displaced communities. Several host countries in the region have not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention. This leaves displaced communities without formal legal status, without access to police or judicial protection, and with no recourse to state-administered justice when violence occurs.
This session, led by three refugee and displaced women’s organizations, will explore the intersection of GBV and displacement and what they have built as a response to the absence of state protections. 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 leave with practices they can adapt in their own displacement-affected contexts, and gain insights into how to meaningfully resource and partner with refugee women’s organisations in policy and programming.
Register here.
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.
Register here.
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.
Despite global progress in measuring violence against women (VAW), major gaps continue to obscure its true scale and health impact. Persistent challenges in defining and measuring different forms of VAW limit evidence-based policymaking, investment, and effective multisectoral responses. This panel, jointly organized by WHO, IHME, UN Women and UNFPA, explores how data and measurement gaps weaken prevention and response efforts, focusing on non-partner sexual violence (NPSV), technology-facilitated violence against women (TFVAW) and global health burden of VAW.
NPSV remains significantly underestimated, with poor cross-national comparability and variations on operational definitions Meanwhile, TFVAW is a rapidly evolving form/modality of abuse for which agreed-upon measures are still emerging. These weaknesses across prevalence monitoring are linked to under recognition of health consequences.
Building on recent improvements in the Global Burden of Disease framework, the panel highlights that health loss attributable to VAW remains underestimated due to limited high-quality evidence on exposure–outcome relationships. It calls for stronger, more coordinated efforts to improve definitions, expand prevalence tracking, strengthen research on long-term health impacts, and invest in data systems. Improving how VAW is “counted” is essential for better monitoring, resource allocation, and more effective health and policy responses.
Strong and autonomous feminist movements are influential drivers of sustainable policy change and progress on ending violence against women and girls (EVAWG). In support of these movements and building on earlier investments, the European Union and UN Women have partnered since 2023 through the Advocacy, Coalition Building and Transformative Feminist Action to End Violence Against Women Programme (ACT to End Violence Against Women).
Through direct investment in women’s rights organizations, coalition-building, research and advocacy, ACT aims to strengthen the leadership, resilience and collective influence of feminist movements while enhancing evidence-informed advocacy and accountability for global and regional EVAWG commitments.
The session will feature ACT civil society partner reflections from Africa, Latin America and those with a global scope,[1] including what works to strengthen feminist movements and coalitions in diverse contexts, lessons from research partnerships and evidence-based advocacy as pathways for accelerating accountability for EVAWG.
Participants will gain practical insights on strengthening feminist movements, networking and entry points for collaboration with advocates from Africa and Latin America and co-creation of priorities for strengthening the EVAWG movement ecosystem over the coming years.
Offsite. Register here.
The movement to prevent violence against children in and through schools is gaining momentum. Schools provide a structured and accountable environment, making them ideal platforms for advancing interventions on safety, justice and inclusion and engaging the wider community – including parents – in prevention efforts. Current milestones like the Global Ministerial Conference to End Violence Against Children offer opportunities for deeper collaboration across sectors, yet global backsliding and increasing fragmentation undermine significant achievements in transforming education systems towards gender response prevention. This participant driven event will showcase the latest research and practice-based knowledge from across landmark school-based prevention collaborations, including learning from consultations to develop a foundational intervention to prevent violence in and through schools. This event will unpack what is needed to further solidify our understanding of what works at scale, to strengthen resilience and capabilities of the next generation of activists, practitioners and researchers, and explore how we can build this next pipeline of leadership. Together we will foster connections across sub-sectors by explicitly examining intersections between initiatives, encouraging reflection on commonalities and differences, highlighting Global South civil society leadership, and facilitating open discussions about shared strengths and challenges – be it in terms of resources or capacities – in the current evolving context.
Thursday 8th – Afternoon Events (13:00 – 14:30)
Dignity Alliance International, together with partner organisations from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, will host a focused launch and learning dialogue around its new study, Survivors’ Idea of Justice: Centering the Lived Experiences of Survivors of Sexual Violence.
Based on conversations with 165 survivors of sexual violence and 155 family members, the study expands conventional understandings of justice, which often equate closure with a court verdict. It foregrounds survivors’ lived experiences of dignity, safety, healing, family and community support, economic independence and long-term recovery.
The event will bring together a curated group of funders, researchers, feminist organisations, practitioners and policy actors working on sexual violence, survivor-centred justice, psychosocial support and community accountability. Through a presentation of key findings and a moderated dialogue, participants will explore what survivors are telling us about justice, what current systems continue to miss, and how funding, policy and practice can better respond to survivors’ priorities.
Rather than a conventional report launch, the event is envisioned as a strategic conversation on how survivor-defined justice can reshape GBV response systems. It will invite reflection on the roles of legal aid, mental health care, livelihood support, family engagement and community accountability in advancing dignity and justice after sexual violence.
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.
This participant-driven Strategy Co-Creation Lab and Knowledge-to-Action Exchange will introduce the four-year strategic vision of the Spotlight Initiative Africa Regional Programme (SIARP 2.0, 2026–2029). Building on the achievements of SIARP 1.0, including support for the development of the EVAWG Africa Convention, the operationalization of the ECOWAS Gender Observatory, advances in harmful practices accountability frameworks, the development of the first AU Regional Action Plan on EVAWG, and strengthened shadow reporting platforms,, this session explore how stronger partnerships, evidence and collective action can accelerate progress on ending violence against women and girls (EVAWG) and harmful practices, while advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) across Africa.
Bridging the gap between research, activism, and policymaking, this event directly engages donors, regional policymakers, and frontline civil society organizations. Through interactive, world-café-style “Strategy Hubs,” participants will discuss developing data-driven strategies to counter anti-rights movements and strategize for sustainable investment pathways in Africa. Drawing upon the SIARP2.0 blueprint, this event provides a dynamic, collaborative space to facilitate south-south exchange around financial commitments and uptake of evidence by policymakers to eliminate violence against women and girls (VAWG) and harmful practices across the continent.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a fundamental barrier to sustainable development, with consequences that cut across health, education, economic productivity, and institutional trust. Over the past decade, the evidence base on effective approaches to prevent and respond to VAWG has expanded significantly. Yet an enduring challenge remains: how to move from promising interventions and individual projects to sustainable impact at scale.
Addressing that challenge requires more than evidence alone. It requires financing, political commitment, institutional capacity, and strong partnerships across the VAWG ecosystem. Multilateral development banks (MDBs), through their relationships with governments, financing instruments, and policy engagement, can help support this transition from successful interventions to large-scale action. Drawing on experiences from the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank Group, and Asian Development Bank, this session will explore practical lessons on scaling impact, the enabling factors and constraints that shape progress, and opportunities for collaboration among governments, researchers, civil society organizations, donors, and development finance institutions.
Session Objectives:
- Understand how development finance and government systems can help take effective VAWG interventions to scale.
- Learn from concrete examples of MDB-supported efforts to expand evidence-based approaches across sectors and countries.
- Identify the key factors that enable or constrain MDBs in collaborating with governments to achieve scale, including financing, policy reform, institutional capacity, and partnerships.
- Explore how MDBs, governments, researchers, civil society organizations, and development partners can work together to accelerate impact.
- Identify priorities for future collaboration and evidence generation to strengthen VAWG prevention and response efforts.
The Global Alliance for the Protection of Boys from Sexual Violence (GAPB) is hosting a screening of a short film telling the story of Arshaad, a 16-year-old boy growing up in a city in Malaysia, together with his best friend Zafri. Through their friendship, the story will explore gender norms around masculinity and sexual violence against boys, and how these two can mark lives and relationships.
The screening will be followed by a panel with the director of the short-film and some GAPB members, who will connect the film to real-world responses, opportunities for change and lessons from both research and practice. They will reflect on ways to transform masculinities, strategies to protect boys from sexual violence and how to break the silence on these issues through media and storytelling.
By bringing together people working across film, child protection practice, gender equity and research, the session will facilitate cross-sector learning on sexual violence against boys and masculinities. It will encourage participants to think through what this means for their work and discuss ideas to protect boys from sexual violence while addressing gender-based violence.
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.
Thursday 8th – Evening Events (19:30 – 21:30)
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.
Closed event.
This is an invitation-only meeting to brainstorm what can be done to strengthen research and interventions on VAW andmental health in the context of prevention and response and identify key evidence and measurement gaps.
Friday 9th – All Day
REMAP (Restoring equity to measuring and preventing perinatal intimate partner violence) is a 12-month project based training program for a cohort of 18 early career researchers from South Africa, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States. At this symposium the 18 trainees will present findings from each of their mentored research projects related to perinatal intimate partner violence, and pitch potential next steps, receiving guidance and advice from senior and near-peer mentors. This will be an all day event, potentially open to all SVRI attendees, dependent on the comfort and consent of REMAP trainees.
Friday 9th – Half Day (Morning)
Closed event
The event will present research priorities and findings from SVRI’s project in Africa and Middle East on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in higher education. The launch event will bring together stakeholders, researchers, practitioners to share and learn about GBV in HEIs and will launch the community of Practice on GBV in HEIs. The event will facilitate exchange of knowledge, research and policy based interventions and identify key areas where the field would like to building momentum by coming together in the CoP.
Pornography has become a default sexuality educator for many children and young people, with serious implications for their capacity to negotiate relationships and sexuality that are safe, respectful, mutual and consenting. While some claim that pornography can contribute positively to young people’s sexual socialisation and experiences, such a position downplays important negative influences, particularly concerning gendered inequalities and violence. Pornography consumption is associated with a range of harmful attitudes, behaviours, and experiences, including more sexually objectifying and stereotypic gender views of women, rape myth acceptance, sexual coercion and aggression, and sexual and dating violence victimisation. There is growing international evidence that pornography is contributing to a significant rise in sexual violence among children. However, many policymakers, parents, educators, and other professionals who work with children and young people do not grasp the scale and urgency of the issue or feel ill-equipped to address it.
This event aims to:
- Build awareness of pornography’s impacts on children and young people with a focus on how pornography contributes to gender-based and sexual violence – drawing on international research and video excerpts from interviews with young people, experts and pornography industry professionals.
- Promote discussion to build understanding and momentum to address pornography’s harms to children.
Register here.
What if conversations about financing gender-based violence prevention and response started not with “How much funding is available?” but with “What do movements need finance to make possible?”
Co-hosted by Criterion Institute and Fòs Feminista, this interactive session invites participants to rethink how finance can build the capabilities, relationships, and infrastructure feminist and social change movements need for lasting change. Criterion Institute brings the framework — a compendium on financing movements that shifts the unit of analysis from financial instruments to the capabilities and infrastructure a financing strategy builds. Fòs Feminista brings the practice — years of experience building financial infrastructure with feminist civil society across the Global South.
Together, they unpack five capabilities—extending time, managing risk, building assets, directing capital, and building intermediation—as tools for moving beyond grants and loans toward lasting capacity, grounded in real examples from Fòs Feminista’s partners of building financial infrastructure for feminist movements—and then it’s your turn.
Through a participatory Financial Imagination Clinic, you’ll work alongside Criterion Institute and Fòs Feminista to apply these ideas to the financing challenges and opportunities in your own work. Together, you’ll explore what needs to change — not only in how movements are funded, but in how risk is shared, capital is directed, and financial infrastructure is built — to create the conditions for movements to thrive over the long term.
Gender norms and power dynamics shape how people experience and respond to health emergencies, including risks of gender-based violence (GBV). Yet outbreak responses are frequently criticised for being gender-blind (Davies and Bennett, 2016; Harman, 2024). During outbreaks, economic disruption and social change can alter traditional gender roles and masculinities, increasing vulnerabilities to GBV. However, many outbreak responders lack practical skills to investigate these shifts and apply findings to programme design.
This event addresses that gap by strengthening participants’ capacity to use qualitative, participatory and adaptive research methods in both offline and online spaces. Drawing on lessons from recent outbreaks, participants will engage in practical exercises using power mapping, citizen ethnography, community dialogue design and rapid gender analysis. These activities will support participants to generate community-led evidence and translate insights into gender-responsive outbreak response strategies.
Designed for humanitarian practitioners, gender specialists, policymakers and researchers, the workshop also emphasises ethical and safety-focused approaches, including trauma-informed practice and distress protocols. Open to delegates globally, it draws on examples from diverse settings, particularly low- and middle-income countries, while providing tools adaptable to a wide range of outbreak contexts.
Friday 9th – Half Day (Afternoon)
EQI, SVRI and UN Women invite SVRI Forum 2026 participants to join a roundtable technical discussion on the developmentof global guidelines for LGBTQ+ inclusion into long-standing violence against women (VAW) and violence against children(VAC) household surveys.
LGBTQ+ communities experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence in childhood and adolescence, intimatepartner violence, and other forms of violence and discrimination. Yet quantitative measurement of these experiences instandardized household surveys is limited.
Building on recent momentum around LGBTQ+ inclusion in VAW and VAC research, this roundtable will include briefpresentations from recent surveys inclusive of LGBTQ+ participants, followed by a guided technical discussion on thedevelopment of best practices for survey questions (standardized and population-specific), response categories, survey itemplacement, skip patterns, cross-time comparability, and an ethics and safety branching matrix to map choices, possibleoutcomes, probabilities, or consequences of LGBTQ+ survey inclusion.
Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against sex workers is a pervasive yet under-researched global health and human rights issue, shaped by intersecting factors such as criminalisation, stigma, gender inequality, and socioeconomic marginalisation. Despite growing recognition of these challenges, research efforts remain fragmented, limiting the development of effective, evidence-informed policies and interventions.
This interactive workshop will bring together sex workers, sex worker-led organisations, advocates, service providers, researchers, donors, and policymakers to collaboratively develop a Global Research Agenda on Sex Work and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Research. Through a participatory and inclusive process, participants will share experiences, existing evidence, emerging practices, and research priorities from diverse regional and national contexts.
Drawing on elements of Delphi and Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) methodologies, the workshop will facilitate collective identification, discussion, and prioritisation of key research questions and evidence gaps. Particular attention will be given to policy and practice gaps, under-researched populations and settings, ethical and community-led research approaches, and opportunities to strengthen the use of evidence for advocacy and programming.
The workshop aims to produce a shared and actionable global research agenda grounded in lived experience, community expertise, and interdisciplinary knowledge. Outputs will inform future research, funding priorities, policy development, and collaborative initiatives to prevent and respond to SGBV experienced by sex workers worldwide.
As preparations gather pace for the Second Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children in Manila, this session will explore the critical role of youth-led research in strengthening accountability and advancing action to end violence against children.
Despite growing political commitment, including through the Bogotá Ministerial and its Call to Action, significant gaps remain between global commitments and the realities experienced by children and young people. Persistent challenges, including harmful practices such as child marriage, the influence of social and faith norms, and inadequate survivor-centred protection systems, continue to undermine progress.
To help inform advocacy and policy discussions ahead of the Manila Ministerial, Restless Development’s 2026 State of Youth Civil Society Report (SOYCSR) will focus on ending violence against children. Produced through a youth-led, cross-regional research process, the report will centre the experiences, perspectives, and recommendations of young people and challenge dominant narratives on what is needed to drive change.
The session will introduce the report process and highlight the contributions of eight Youth Researchers from across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, who will lead evidence generation from design through to analysis and reporting. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on how youth-generated evidence can strengthen advocacy efforts and ensure that young people’s voices shape decisions and commitments on ending violence against children.
What are we learning across research, practice, and advocacy about advancing GBV prevention in Southeast Asia—and what connections and opportunities could we take forward together beyond the Forum?
Join other practitioners, researchers, advocates, and others working to advance GBV prevention in Southeast Asia for an interactive exchange that brings different perspectives, experiences, and areas of expertise into conversation. Taking place on the final day of the SVRI Forum, the session offers an opportunity to connect across research, practice, and advocacy, explore what emerging knowledge and experiences mean for GBV prevention in Southeast Asia, and meet others interested in taking these conversations forward.
The exchange will be grounded in perspectives and priorities emerging from Southeast Asian civil society, drawing from a year-long process of in-country and thematic dialogues convened by the Southeast Asia GBV Prevention Platform with Women’s Rights Organizations, Organizations of Persons with Disabilities, LGBTQIA+ groups, and other civil society actors. These perspectives will open the conversation, inviting participants from Southeast Asia to bring their own research, practice, experiences, and questions into the exchange and explore where different forms of knowledge and expertise can strengthen one another.
Through short inputs, facilitated small-group conversations, plenary exchange, and structured networking, participants will have opportunities to find points of connection across disciplines, sectors, and advocacy areas within Southeast Asia; meet others working on shared or complementary priorities across the region; and explore possibilities for future learning, collaboration, and collective action. The session is an invitation to connect ideas and people across Southeast Asia—and to consider together what might be worth carrying forward beyond the SVRI Forum.