This second global report presents results of Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces for Women and Girls initiatives in a range of cities in Africa, Latin America, the Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, North America, and Europe. It stresses the need to invest in local data and evidence to inform participatory safe city approaches engaging women and girls, including women who face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence (for example, women from minority populations living in under-served communities), and provides examples of how cities have adapted their safe city action to phases of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

It illustrates what governments, grassroots women, women’s organizations, and other community partners can do to implement interventions that form part of a comprehensive human rights–based approach to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence against women and girls in public spaces, including findings from recent evaluations conducted at country and global levels on safe cities free of violence against women and girls.

The report calls for the further development and implementation of comprehensive laws and policies that prevent and respond to sexual violence in public spaces—one of the main gaps identified in the 25-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.