Global progress in preventing violence against children through data and evidence for action

Violence against children is a pervasive global public health, human rights, and development challenge. Over the past 50 years, the field has transformed violence against children from a largely hidden issue into a measurable and preventable problem. This discussion article examines two major drivers of global progress: population-based data systems and evidence-based prevention and response frameworks. First, violence-specific surveys, including the Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS), have generated nationally representative data on the prevalence, timing, perpetrators, consequences, disclosure, and service-seeking patterns of violence across diverse settings. Using publicly available VACS findings as a descriptive example, we show how these data have made violence visible, supported global estimates and burden analyses, and created a foundation for policy action and accountability. Second, evidence synthesis efforts, particularly through INSPIRE: Seven Strategies for Ending Violence Against Children, have identified interventions with evidence of effectiveness, including parenting programs, school-based approaches, economic strengthening combined with life skills, healthy relationship education, and therapeutic services for children exposed to violence. Despite this progress, translation into sustained population-level impact remains incomplete. Key threats include the fragility of global data infrastructure, limited evidence on scale and durability, inadequate financing, and emerging risks such as technology-facilitated violence, conflict, displacement, epidemics, and climate instability. The next phase of the field must protect and modernize data systems, scale evidence-informed interventions while generating new learning, integrate violence prevention across sectors, and sustain political commitment to achieve measurable, equitable reductions in violence against children over the next 50 years and beyond.