Born to Be Free: A Regional Study of Interventions to Enhance Women and Girls Safety and Mobility in Public Spaces, Asia and the Pacific Region

The review included 55 evaluated interventions, a survey of over 118 stakeholders working on the issue globally, over 50 in-depth interviews and field visits to Jakarta, Indonesia; Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam; and Seoul, Republic of Korea.

The review found that there is an inconsistent understanding of the root causes of violence against women and girls (VAWG) in public spaces. There is often a failure to see violence against women in the urban public space as part of a larger continuum of violence against women and girls, which limits cross-cutting and holistic solutions in addressing the causes of sexual violence. Nevertheless, there are certain promising approaches. The highly participatory and explicitly feminist interventions from the global UN Women Safe Cities programme, among others, show great promise in their inclusion of women from the community to take up leadership roles in the safe cities movement.