Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG)
VAWG covers violence committed at home, in public, or online. It causes physical, sexual, psychological, or economic harm. The term “women” includes girls throughout.
WCP
GBV
Forms VAWG Takes
VAWG rarely fits one neat category. It spans many overlapping behaviors.
Domestic abuse, including financial abuse, happens behind closed doors but follows public patterns. Sexual violence, abuse, and exploitation include commercial exploitation as a distinct, serious form. Sexual harassment and bullying extend into workplaces, schools, and streets alike.
Technology-facilitated violence has grown fastest in recent years. It includes harmful imagery shared without consent, online stalking, and coordinated harassment campaigns. Stalking itself increasingly crosses from physical space into digital space.
Trafficking and forced prostitution affect adults; all child sexual exploitation is addressed separately and treated with zero tolerance. Female genital mutilation and forced marriage remain widespread harmful practices in specific regions. So-called “honour” crimes complete this list, acts of violence justified through cultural or religious reasoning.
The Human Rights Foundation
Two ideas anchor every response to VAWG. First, it is a form of gender-based discrimination. Second, it is a violation of women’s human rights, not merely a private or criminal matter.
This framing matters. It means international human rights law, not just domestic criminal law, applies directly to VAWG.
Key Frameworks and Resources
Several institutions have built tools to translate this framing into practice.
UN Women’s Virtual Knowledge Centre offers practical guidance on laws, policies, and programmes, drawn from case studies worldwide.
The Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe’s binding treaty, sets out detailed obligations for preventing and combating violence against women.
LSE’s “Tackling Violence Against Women” resource explains the global and regional human rights structures available to advocates and lawyers working this space.
RYB’s Place in This Picture
RYB tracks VAWG to connect lived harm with the legal and institutional tools meant to stop it. The next page in this tree, CSE, examines one especially commercialized form in depth.
Looking Forward
Watch how technology-facilitated violence reshapes this field. Laws and protections built for physical-world harm are still catching up to harm that happens entirely online.
Sources
- Tackling Violence Against Women, LSE — blogs.lse.ac.uk/vaw
Istanbul Convention, Council of Europe — coe.int/en/web/istanbul-convention - Virtual Knowledge Centre to End Violence against Women and Girls, UN Women — endvawnow.org
- Facts and figures: Ending violence against women, UN Women — unwomen.org/en/articles/facts-and-figures/facts-and-figures-ending-violence-against-women