The health sector is increasingly committed to responding and alleviating violence against women as a public health problem which has serious health consequences for women and their children.
Thirty years since the benchmark Beijing platform for women’s action Supplied with a roadmap towards equality and empowerment of women, more than 160 countries have at least a national survey on the prevalence of violence against women. This makes it possible to monitor progress on the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.2, to eliminate all forms of violence.
In 2016, the World Health Assembly approved the WHO Global Action Plan To strengthen the health system, in a multisectoral response, by approaching interpersonal violence against women, girls and children. The plan emphasizes a public health approach, the integration of prevention and response of violence into essential health services and the strengthening of links with multisectoral efforts on gender equality, human rights and sustainable development.
This plan aimed to help the Member States operationalize the resolution WHA67.15 (2014)Strengthen the role of the health system in the fight against violence, in particular against women and girls, and against children, in four areas:
- strengthen leadership and governance of the health sector through laws, policies and protocols;
- Strengthen the service and complete capacities of health sector services;
- promote prevention based on evidence; And
- Improved surveillance, surveillance and evidence to end violence against women.
A newly released Database of violence against women in health The progress made by countries towards commitments made in this world plan. Data from 200 countries of 48 indicators show an increasing integration of prevention and response to violence against women and girls in national health strategies and policies. More and more countries form health workers in clinical care centered on survivors for the violence of intimate partners and / or sexual violence and the adoption of standardized protocols, while the access and quality of quality care for survivors are improving.
For example, responding to Ukrainian refugees who are subject to sexual violence during the conflict, advice and training documents have been translated into polishing. The capacity building of health professionals has been institutionalized to serve refugee and local populations through the National House of Nurses and midwives and the training of WHO integrated into the programs of four universities. In 2024, nearly 500 health workers were trained and a working group led by a Polish feminist NGO – Femnoteka monitored the progress of the coverage and quality of the clinical management of violence services between rapes and intimate partners.
To date in 2025, WHO and the Special UN Program in Human Reproduction (HRP) have finalized and published several key resources that improve the ability of health systems to respond to violence in the event of emergency and non-urgency.
Take care of women subject to violence: training facilitated online for health workers Offers a virtual and interactive program that allows health providers to provide front -line empathetic support to women who experience violence, using the life approach approved by WHO. Adapted from training in person, it is designed for use in the event of an emergency or parameters with low resources where training in person is not possible, to ensure continuity of care and a response centered on survivors.
These training tools are essential to build a sustainable and integrated response of national health systems which addresses violence against women as a public health problem
Avni Amin / Unit Framework of Rights and Equality throughout the course of life at WHO and HRP
In the meantime, the Clinical management of rape and violence of intimate emergency partners: a training toolbox Offers tools to strengthen the capacities of health workers to provide clinical care to survivors. The toolbox takes up the unique challenges of humanitarian contexts by offering flexible and modular training aligned with WHO directives and the minimum initial service package for sexual and reproductive health.
“These training tools are essential to build a sustainable and integrated response of national health systems which addresses violence against women as a public health problem,” explains Avni Amin, responsible for rights and equality throughout the life course at WHO and HRP. “They help translate global commitments into actual action by making front -line health services more focused on survivors and of better quality, whatever the context.”
Research that fueling impact in the country
As the global plan points out, research is essential to clarify the programming focused on evidence. The preliminary results of a recently finished study have shown promising results of a women’s strengthening agency in the pregnancy program, an empowerment council intervention with pregnant women and girls participating in prenatal care in a hospital in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in Kigoma, Tanzania. The intervention has shown great acceptability with 82% of women registered for the study that returns more than the minimum number of sessions. He also showed an improvement in maternal mental health following the intervention, the participants having undergone a reduced probability of 44% in moderate to severe depression compared to the control group, 6 months after receiving the intervention.
By forming more than 10,000 health workers in 29 fragile and humanitarian contexts, training packages Operationalize WHO and HRP’s commitment to strengthen capacity in accordance with SDG 5.2 as well as the WHO’s commitment to ensure universal health coverage. They guarantee that the care for survivors are integrated into the responses of routine and emergency health and illustrate how WHO and HRP reflect global policy commitments in practice at the country level, guided by solid research.