A Sustainable Legacy: Insights and evidence from seed investments to end violence against women and girls

In 2017, the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) launched Spotlight Initiative – the largest global, targeted effort to eliminate all forms of VAWG and advance gender equality, a precondition to achieving the SDGs. With a €500 million investment from 2017 to 2023, the Initiative delivered significant results across 26 country programmes, 6 regional programmes and 2 civil society grant-giving programmes in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific and the Caribbean. 

Examining the sustainability of the Initiative’s comprehensive model and results is essential to the success of its second generation of programmes, which began launching in 2024.

This report explores the sustainability of Spotlight Initiative’s achievements and approaches two years after the closure of its first phase of programmes and draws on insights from virtual interviews and surveys that included 106 stakeholders from governments, civil society organizations (CSOs), the UN, the EU and other partners.

Read the summary (20 pages).