What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls Evidence Reviews Paper 2: Interventions to prevent violence against women and girls

This paper is the second in a series of four evidence reviews that were produced by What Works to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls (What Works). What Works is a UK Department for International Development (DFID)-funded global programme that is investing an unprecedented £25 million over five years to assist with the prevention of VAWG. It supports primary prevention efforts across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, which seek to understand and address the underlying causes of violence in order to stop it before it starts. The purpose of the current paper is to examine the evidence base for the effectiveness of interventions to prevent VWAG. 

The accompanying summary brief presents the evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG). It is based on a rapid review of the existing evidence through a review of reviews and online searches of academic databases.

The complete series includes:

• Paper 1: State of the field of research on violence against women and girls.
• Paper 2: Interventions to prevent violence against women and girls.
• Paper 3: Response mechanisms to prevent violence against women and girls.
• Paper 4: Approaches to scale-up and assessing cost-effectiveness of programmes to preventviolence against women and girls.