This synthesis brings together the voices of key civil society organization practitioners and their practice-based knowledge to explore and to better understand how they contribute to legal and policy systems change.

This synthesis review contributes to this focus on service provision but explores it through the lens of civil society organizations, learning from 11 projects implemented by 8 CSOs that received funding from the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women;

This synthesis review draws on the experiences and practice-based knowledge of civil society organizations, especially women’s rights organizations supported by the UN Trust Fund, to document the impact on and adaptations to prevention programmes during the COVID-19 pandemic across the world.

Civil society organizations working to end violence against women face numerous contextual challenges and resistance in the course of their work at multiple levels. Resistance to the work that seeks to prevent violence against women and girls is quite common.

Women’s rights organizations and civil society organizations regularly face changing environments and sociopolitical challenges. The uncertain and context-specific nature of social change means that programmes to prevent violence against women and girls must work in adaptive ways.

Designing effective training takes time and effort; it requires an iterative and adaptive process that is time and resource intensive. From the perspective of behaviour change, training can have enormous strategic value and be a critical pathway to prevent violence against women and girls.

Adolescent-focused approaches as a means of preventing violence against women and girls are an important area for intervention and research. Adolescence is a critical time for both boys and girls, but adolescent girls in particular face new gendered risks at this life stage, because of their increased vulnerabilities to various forms of violence and harmful practices.

Exploring intersectional approaches when designing and implementing projects is critical to preventing violence against women and girls, and key to realizing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 2 “Leave no one behind”.

Mobilizing women as agents of change in their own lives is key for projects working to prevent violence against women and girls. As “community facilitators”, women beneficiaries of projects are a crucial link to the broader community of women that prevention projects need to engage with.

Mobilizing communities is critical to preventing violence against women and girls. However, deeper understanding is needed of: the processes and factors that facilitate effective community mobilization in various contexts; how the changing dynamics of social contexts influence community mobilization programmes; and how programmes adapt in response.

Faith-based actors and traditional actors are increasingly recognized as key to preventing violence against women and girls and crucial to realizing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5 (achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls by 2030). Their reach and influence cannot be ignored, especially given their unique position in households and communities.