Key findings: Despite the growing number of interventions related to violence against women and girls (VAWG) during recent years, to date, few rigorous evaluations have been carried out of related programmes. The quality of existing evaluations is also variable. Experts have observed that efforts to address violence against women in recent years have been relatively small scale, under-funded and often poorly evaluated. Overall, there seems to be growing consensus on the need for more rigorous evaluations of interventions related to VAWG.
Many of the evaluations that do exist tend to evaluate specific projects rather than wider programmes. This report aims to identify some of the key organisations and individuals that have been involved in carrying out these evaluations. It mainly focuses on identifying key organisations and individuals that have extensive experience in conducting evaluations or interventions related to VAWG rather than those that have conducted one-off evaluations. Nevertheless, a list of additional evaluations is provided.
Two of the key organisations identified in this report are the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit (CWASU) at London Metropolitan University and the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the University of Bristol. Although many (but not all) of their evaluations have been carried out in the UK, the organisations also have experience working on interventions related to VAWG in the international, and developing, context. For example, CWASU was commissioned by UN Women to develop online guidance on the principles and process of coordinating responses to address violence against women and girls. This drew on practices from around the world and included case studies from Europe, Africa and the United States.
