Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Through Survivor Leadership at G20

Standing at the G20 Social Summit in Johannesburg, I felt again the truth that has guided my life and my advocacy: if we are serious about ending violence against women and girls, we must prevent violence against children (VAC), especially childhood sexual abuse.

Survivors know this in our bones. Research confirms it. Yet too often, childhood sexual abuse is treated as a side issue, a tragic but separate problem, instead of what it truly is: a central driver of gender inequality and a root cause of violence later in life. Childhood sexual abuse prevention is not an “add-on” to gender equality work; it is fundamental to achieving it and must be clearly positioned as such in every policy, every platform, and every global commitment, including those of the G20.

The G20 is not just another international meeting. It brings together the governments that represent around 85% of global GDP, 75% of world trade and most of the world’s population. Decisions taken in this space shape global economic policy, technology governance, development priorities and, increasingly, social and human rights agendas. That is why the G20 matters so profoundly for ending violence against women and girls (VAWG). When gender-based violence (GBV) and childhood sexual abuse are recognized in G20 declarations and communiqués, they are no longer seen only as “social” or “women’s” issues—they begin to be recognized as central to economic stability, public health, labor participation, and long-term development.

The G20 can raise the bar on financing, set expectations for public–private partnerships, drive innovation in prevention, and send strong signals to technology companies, financial institutions and governments about what will and will not be tolerated. When the G20 speaks, systems start to move.

In Johannesburg, South Africa’s leadership on this agenda could not be missed. On 21 November 2025, during the G20 Social Summit, President Cyril Ramaphosa reminded the world that South Africa had declared gender-based violence and femicide a national crisis in 2019. That statement was more than words. It acknowledged that violence against women and girls is a national emergency that demands a systemic, coordinated, government-wide response.

By bringing this urgency into the G20 discourse, South Africa reframed GBV as a crisis that undermines national stability, economic growth and public health. It showed what it looks like when a Head of State is willing to name GBV as a crisis, not a marginal issue. That kind of political courage paves the way for stronger laws, better-funded services and societal shifts that elevate survivors’ rights. It also showed the vital role of the Global South in shaping the G20 agenda. South Africa treated GBV not as a peripheral concern, but as a structural threat rooted in histories of inequality, racial injustice and patriarchal systems. That framing strengthened the case for integrating child sexual violence into all strategies to prevent and respond to gender-based violence.

As a survivor of sexual violence by clergy when I was a child, I know intimately that violence travels across the course of one’s life. It does not simply happen in one moment and then disappear. For most of us, childhood harm shaped our adolescence, adulthood, relationships, health, economic opportunity, leadership trajectories and the capacity to thrive. Girls who are abused in childhood face higher risks of intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation, self-harm and mental health challenges later in life.

Preventing childhood sexual abuse is therefore not only a moral imperative—it is a critical intervention that disrupts intergenerational violence, increases school retention, improves mental health and reduces gender-based and intimate partner violence later in life. It also strengthens women’s leadership pipelines, supports economic mobility and builds societies that are safer, healthier and more productive. When we prevent violence against children—especially sexual violence—we are sowing the seeds of gender equality, not just responding to its absence.

The recent presidencies of Brazil and South Africa have created important openings for the G20 to recognize this reality. Brazil, as G20 host in 2024, helped to shift the conversation toward evidence, data and financing. It elevated national data ecosystems, evidence-based prevention and the value of public–private financing mechanisms, and recognized that GBV is not just a social issue but an economic and development issue.

South Africa then advanced the agenda by framing gender-based violence as a structural issue rooted in inequality and colonial legacies, integrating violence against children and violence against women and girls, championing continental leadership through the African Union Development Agency and focusing attention on the explosion of technology-facilitated violence. Across these presidencies, survivors and advocates pushed a simple but transformative message: violence does not begin with women; it begins with children, and if we want different outcomes in adulthood, we must transform the conditions of childhood and adolescence.

To understand why childhood sexual abuse prevention must sit at the heart of gender equality, we need to look honestly at how violence unfolds over time. Violence affects girls across the life course, but its forms change. Adolescence is the highest-risk hinge—an inflection point where childhood harms from trusted adults combine with added exposure to peer and dating violence, online abuse and other forms of violence faced by women. It is also a formative window in which relationships, sexuality, identity and agency are shaped. Adolescence sits at the junction of child protection and women’s rights. Explicitly making this life-course logic visible, with adolescents clearly in view, shows why early action matters and how it is directly linked to gender equality goals across technology accountability, education, health, leadership and labor participation.

When we protect girls in childhood and adolescence, we are not just preventing immediate harm; we are altering their trajectories, making it more likely they will stay in school, access decent work, choose safe relationships, become leaders and participate fully in society.

This is not theory alone. Real-world data from, for example, the 2014 study by the Overseas Development Institute and ChildFund Alliance, shows that the cost of childhood violence alone reaches into the trillions globally. The economic drain of unaddressed violence undermines growth, productivity, and innovation. This is highlighted in the Brave Movement’s 3RN.org campaign – and it was no coincidence that we took this campaign, with its message about the huge economic opportunity missed until we keep all children safe – to the G20.

Even more than the numbers, survivors’ stories tell us what is at stake. Every time a girl drops out of school because of abuse, the world loses a future leader, a scientist, an artist, a policymaker. Every time a child is left without support, the chances increase that pain will echo into the next generation. When the G20 makes commitments to invest in prevention—through child protection systems, mental health services, social protection, and community-based programs—it is not only doing what is right; it is also making a wise economic decision that will pay dividends for decades.

At the same time, we must be honest about the gaps. The recent G20 commitments show real potential, but implementation remains uneven and underfunded. On the positive side, we have seen stronger language on GBV in leaders’ declarations and communiqués, increased recognition of the need for integrated services and the first serious acknowledgements of technology-facilitated violence. Brazil’s emphasis on data and public–private partnerships and South Africa’s focus on GBV as a structural crisis and on life-course approaches are all promising. But commitments are still largely voluntary; there are few concrete timelines, targets or accountability mechanisms.

Financing for prevention remains a fraction of what is required. New financing mechanisms, including blended finance and innovative partnerships, have been discussed more than they have been delivered. And while there is growing reference to violence against children, childhood sexual abuse prevention is far from being treated as a foundational pillar of gender equality.

Women’s rights organizations and survivor-led movements are the backbone of meaningful progress, and the G20 processes under Brazil and South Africa have helped to widen their political space. We have seen more civil society consultation, more survivor voices at side events, and clearer acknowledgment that grassroots organizations are essential partners. Yet the reality is that most of these groups remain under-resourced, precarious and exposed to retaliation. Progress in strengthening their financing, protection and political space is still fragile.

To expand and safeguard their influence in G20 processes, member states and partners must commit to long-term, flexible funding that reaches local women’s rights and survivor-led organizations directly, not only through large intermediaries. They must create formal, recurring spaces for survivors and WROs in G20 working groups and advisory bodies, not just invite them to speak once. They must protect human rights defenders from harassment and attacks, both online and offline. And they must support community-driven data and monitoring so that WROs can provide credible, grounded evidence into the global conversation.

It is in this systemic context that the G20 diplomacy crisis following Johannesburg is so worrying. Shortly after the Summit, the United States—incoming host for the 2026 G20—announced that South Africa would not be invited to the next G20 summit. This decision, rooted in political tensions unrelated to gender-based violence, has serious implications for the agenda we have been building. Excluding South Africa threatens continuity across presidencies at precisely the moment when long-term strategies are needed for GBV and childhood sexual abuse prevention. It sidelines Global South leadership, particularly on the life-course framework that has been so vital to linking violence against children with violence against women and girls. It weakens intersectional feminist perspectives, hinders survivor inclusion and may stall momentum on technology accountability, which South Africa prioritized. This exclusion is not about GBV policy—but it directly harms GBV progress. When geopolitics overshadows gender justice, the world’s most vulnerable pay the price.

From a survivor-advocate perspective, this is more than a diplomatic dispute; it is a warning. It tells us that even when we make gains, they can be undone by decisions that have nothing to do with the safety of women and children. It reminds us that political will is not permanent. For the Brave Movement and for all survivor-led networks, this moment calls for clear, urgent demands. We must call on the United States to restore inclusive, survivor-centered multilateral engagement and ensure that South Africa’s leadership and the broader Global South voice are not erased from the G20 table. We must insist that G20 processes remain spaces where the lived experience of survivors, not geopolitical tensions, shape the priorities and outcomes.

Looking ahead, the United States as 2026 host and the United Kingdom as 2027 host have a responsibility to build on, not roll back, the progress made by Brazil and South Africa. For the United States, this means first restoring the integrity of multilateralism by ensuring that all G20 members, including South Africa, are able to participate fully. It means using its influence over the technology sector to lead global standards on safety-by-design, regulation of online sexual exploitation and abuse, and accountability for platforms whose business models profit from harm. We know there is popular and bipartisan political support for action. I was at the White House in May this year when President Trump signed the Take it Down Act into law, a significant step forward in online protection. It means explicitly integrating violence against children and violence against women and girls in all G20 agenda-setting, naming childhood sexual abuse prevention as core to gender equality rather than treating it as a separate child protection issue. It also means increasing financing for prevention—domestically and internationally—and institutionalizing survivor leadership in advisory bodies, working groups and monitoring mechanisms, so that decisions are shaped by those who know the realities of violence firsthand.

For the United Kingdom, leadership in 2027 should include championing a global prevention framework grounded in life-course evidence, with adolescence clearly recognized as a strategic window for action. The UK can expand direct funding pathways for women’s rights organizations and survivor movements, especially in the Global South, and lead cross-border efforts on digital safety and technology-facilitated violence. It must maintain continuity with the equity frameworks developed under Brazil and South Africa, ensuring that colonial legacies, racial justice and economic inequality remain central to how GBV and childhood sexual abuse are understood and addressed. Both the US and UK must resist any temptation to revert to narrow, fragmented approaches that focus only on adult women or treat childhood violence as a separate silo. Ending VAWG and ending VAC are the same struggle viewed from different points in time.

In the context of the 16 Days of Activism focus on technology-facilitated violence, the G20 has taken important first steps, particularly under South Africa’s presidency, in recognizing this growing crisis. There is now language in G20 outcomes that acknowledges online sexual exploitation, harmful content, cyberbullying and the need for platform responsibility. That recognition matters. But progress remains limited when it comes to concrete, common standards, safeguards and regulatory frameworks. The G20 has not yet agreed on mandatory safety-by-design, nor on strong cross-border enforcement to hold technology companies and social media platforms accountable. Transparency on algorithms and data use remains weak. Survivors’ access to redress online is inconsistent and often inaccessible.

To truly align with the spirit of 16 Days, the next G20 presidencies must turn recognition into regulation—through a shared digital safety agenda that includes common standards, independent oversight and meaningful penalties for non-compliance, developed with input from survivors, adolescents and women’s rights organizations.

As a survivor-advocate, I carry both grief and conviction. Grief for what has been lost—for our stolen childhoods, the silences enforced, the futures diminished. Conviction that it does not have to be this way. Violence against women and girls cannot end unless violence against children ends first. Childhood sexual abuse prevention is foundational to gender equality. Brazil and South Africa understood this and acted with courage and clarity. As the G20 moves to the United States and the United Kingdom, the global community must protect and deepen this progress. Diplomatic disputes cannot be allowed to silence leadership, disrupt continuity or weaken survivor-centered momentum.

The next presidencies must choose courage over convenience, continuity over disruption and prevention over political gamesmanship. They must center survivors and adolescents in all decisions, invest in systems that protect and recognize that every dollar spent on prevention is an investment in a more equal, more peaceful future. The world is watching. Survivors are watching. And we will not stop until every child is safe, every adolescent is supported, every woman is free, every community is protected and every government understands that prevention is not an optional extra, but a core obligation of justice and prosperity.

Ending childhood sexual abuse and ending violence against women and girls are not separate tasks; they are one shared struggle for human dignity—and the G20 has both the power and the responsibility to help end that violence in our lifetime.

Dr. Denise Buchanan is a Psychoneurologist and Founder/CEO of Faith Has Feet. An international advocate, business strategist, and survivor leader, she is deeply committed to ending violence against children (EVAC) and advancing gender-based violence prevention worldwide. As a member of the Global Survivor Council, Dr. Buchanan represented the Brave Movement at the inaugural EVAC Ministerial Conference in Bogotá and recently joined high-level engagements at the G20 Social Summit in South Africa, championing survivor-centered policy, accountability, and investment.