Global estimates suggest that more than half (1 billion) of the world’s children aged 2–17
experienced physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse during the past year.1 Addressing
violence against children and adolescents is part of UNICEF’s core mission to protect the
health and well-being of children and adolescents, grounded in gender equality programming
priorities articulated in the 2018–2021 Gender Action Plan and the 2018–2021 Strategic Plan,
particularly Goal Area 3: Every child is protected from violence and exploitation.
As UNICEF prepares a new Child Protection Strategy and Gender Policy to accompany the
next organization-wide Strategic Plan, this paper examines how and why UNICEF and
international partners should pay greater attention to gender dimensions of violence against
children and adolescents (VAC/A), including drivers of violence and opportunities for more
effective violence prevention and response. Greater attention to gender across all violence
programming and evidence generation responds to recommendations of evaluations of
UNICEF’s work on violence,2
child protection,3
and Gender Action Plans.4,5
This paper also explores the rationale for greater attention to links among different forms of
violence across the lifespan, including ways in which violence against adult women,
particularly intimate partner violence (IPV) affects children’s and adolescents’ health, well-being and risk of violence, and the implications of those intersections for UNICEF’s violence
prevention and response programming.
