What Is the International Violence Against Women Act?
The International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) is proposed US legislation that would embed the prevention of and response to violence against women and girls as a core, non-negotiable component of US foreign policy. Unlike the domestic Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) — which applies within the United States — IVAWA would extend America's legal and financial commitment to combating gender-based violence to every country that receives US foreign assistance.
Specifically, IVAWA would require the US Secretary of State to develop comprehensive, multi-year, country-specific strategies for preventing and responding to violence against women — and to ensure that US diplomats, development officers, and foreign assistance programmes are trained, resourced, and held accountable for implementing those strategies.
The core premise is simple: the United States already invests billions of dollars annually in foreign assistance. IVAWA would ensure that a meaningful portion of that investment explicitly addresses one of the world's most pervasive human rights violations.
Why IVAWA Matters — The Numbers
840 million women globally have experienced violence. 137 women are killed by an intimate partner or family member every day. Only 0.2% of global development aid goes to violence prevention programmes. IVAWA would change what the United States does — and says — about all of that. See the full analysis: Violence Against Women — The Global Crisis
Origins: Why the Domestic Law Was Not Enough
When VAWA was enacted in 1994, it transformed the domestic landscape for survivors of gender-based violence in the United States. Shelters were funded. Protection orders were enforceable across state lines. Law enforcement was trained. Rape crisis centres received federal support for the first time. Over the following seventeen years, intimate partner violence rates in the US declined by 67%.
But women living outside the United States — in countries where the legal system does not recognise domestic violence as a crime, where rape kit backlogs run into the tens of thousands, where women are killed for refusing arranged marriages or for being seen speaking to men outside their family — received none of those protections. And the United States, through its foreign assistance programmes, was not required to prioritise their safety.
Women Thrive Worldwide — whose legacy and mission this site carries forward — was among the earliest and most persistent advocates for changing that. Beginning in the mid-2000s, Women Thrive built a coalition of more than 150 organisations calling on Congress to pass legislation that would make addressing violence against women and girls a central, funded, and accountable mandate of US foreign policy.
Building the Coalition
Advocacy for IVAWA required unusual breadth. The legislation needed support that crossed partisan, sectoral, and geographic lines — because gender-based violence crosses all of them. Women Thrive coordinated with organisations as politically diverse as the Gates Foundation, faith-based development groups, survivor advocacy networks, international NGOs, and academic institutions.
The strategy was built on several pillars:
- Research and data — commissioning and amplifying the evidence base for the scale of global gender-based violence and the documented effectiveness of prevention programmes
- Congressional testimony — organising testimony from survivors, researchers, advocates, and — crucially — public figures who could draw unprecedented media attention
- Constituency building — mobilising grassroots support in the districts of key Congressional swing votes
- Bipartisan framing — positioning IVAWA not as a partisan feminist issue but as a human rights, national security, and foreign policy priority with appeal across the political spectrum
"Every piece of legislation that changes the world starts as a bill nobody believes will pass. IVAWA was no different. What made the difference — always — was the people willing to keep showing up."
— Dr. Victoria Hargrove, Women ThriveNicole Kidman and the Senate Testimony
In 2012, Nicole Kidman testified before a US Senate subcommittee in support of IVAWA. As a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, Kidman used her public platform to make the case for the legislation in terms that reached far beyond the traditional advocacy audience — and to put a recognisable, credible human face on the abstract figures of global gender-based violence.
Her testimony was substantive. She spoke about the specific mechanisms by which violence against women perpetuates poverty, undermines development, and destabilises communities — and about why a failure of US foreign policy to address it was a failure of both principle and strategy. The testimony received extensive media coverage and contributed meaningfully to the political momentum around the bill at a critical moment in its legislative journey.
Read the full account: Nicole Kidman's IVAWA Testimony — What She Said and Why It Still Matters
Sensitivity Training and Law Enforcement
One of IVAWA's central provisions — and one of the most operationally significant — is its requirement for sensitivity training for law enforcement officers in countries receiving US foreign assistance. This provision emerged from decades of research and field experience showing that law enforcement response to gender-based violence is one of the most critical determinants of survivor safety and perpetrator accountability.
In countries where police routinely dismiss domestic violence as a private matter, return survivors to abusive households, or treat rape complaints with disbelief and hostility, legal protections on paper provide no meaningful safety. IVAWA would fund and require training to change that — ensuring that the first point of contact between survivors and the justice system is a supportive, not a harmful, one.
This provision drew significant support from the international law enforcement community and from US military and diplomatic officials who had seen, firsthand, how gender-based violence destabilises the societies in which the US operates.
Where IVAWA Stands
IVAWA has been introduced in multiple Congressional sessions and has attracted co-sponsorship from legislators on both sides of the aisle. It has not yet passed into law. The obstacles have been primarily political — shifting Congressional priorities, disputes over foreign aid spending levels, and the perennial challenge of keeping complex international legislation on the legislative agenda in a polarised political environment.
Crucially, IVAWA's core policy framework — the idea that gender-based violence must be a central consideration in US foreign assistance — has made significant progress even without passage of the specific legislation. Executive orders, State Department policy guidance, and USAID programming have incorporated elements of the IVAWA framework, partly as a result of the sustained advocacy campaign.
The 2022 reauthorization of VAWA also extended some of its principles internationally in limited ways — a recognition that the domestic legislation alone was insufficient and that Congress understood, at least in part, the international dimension of the problem.
The Ongoing Case for IVAWA
As of 2026, the case for IVAWA is, if anything, stronger than it was when advocacy began. The November 2025 WHO and UN Women report confirmed that global progress on intimate partner violence has essentially stalled — 0.2% annual decline over twenty years, while funding for prevention programmes has fallen. Digital violence against women has exploded. Displacement and conflict are driving new spikes in gender-based violence in multiple regions simultaneously.
The United States has the resources, the institutional capacity, and the foreign policy reach to make a difference. IVAWA provides the legal framework to require it to do so. Women Thrive remains committed to that advocacy — and to amplifying the research, testimony, and coalition work that has kept this legislation alive through multiple Congressional sessions.