Report by ACPIR Researcher Drs Matt Mason and Ali Moloney

Every two years, researchers, practitioners and advocates working to end violence against women and children meet at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Forum. It is the world’s largest conference on preventing violence against women and children, where new evidence is shared and turned into action. This year it was held in Bangkok from October 5-9. The programme was built from more than 2,200 submitted abstracts, short summaries of research or practice that were peer reviewed for inclusion. The Forum expected more than 1,500 researchers, practitioners, survivors, policymakers, funders and activists to share findings, challenge current approaches and develop solutions together. Over 1600 actually attended the Forum, with ACPIR researchers Dr Matt Mason and Dr Ali Moloney attending for the first time thanks to the support of a UniSC CIDSEL Social Impact Grant.

The Southeast Asia Gender-Based Violence Prevention Platform and the UN Joint Programme on GBV Prevention co-hosted the 2026 Forum, delivered through UN Women and UNFPA. The Forum places strong emphasis on research and practice from the "majority world", meaning the low- and middle-income regions of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific, where much of the work and learning in this field is taking place. That focus made it a particularly relevant gathering for those of us working with and in the Pacific.

This year, a 27-member Pacific delegation presented 16 sessions, which the Pacific Community described as the largest Pacific presence at the Forum to date. The programme reflected the region’s priorities. The opening plenary examined how rugby in the Pacific became a platform for preventing violence against women and girls, and a second plenary addressed gender-based violence response in Pacific Island communities when climate hits. Diane Kambanei, Director of Papua New Guinea’s National Gender-Based Violence Secretariat, spoke on how a 5,000-person national survey and regional listening tours grounded PNG’s new strategy in data and survivor voices. Further Pacific sessions covered survivor-centered safe shelter in resource-scarce settings and the financing of violence prevention in Fiji. The scale of the problem makes this evidence critical. The Pacific Community reports that rates of violence against women in the region are about twice the global average, with an estimated two in every three Pacific women affected.

For Pacific researchers, evidence quality depends on how violence data are collected, so Matt and Ali spent the opening pre-conference day on methods. The first workshop took the WHO’s updated Putting Women First guidelines as its starting point. It explored how to keep women safe and protect their privacy and consent when research moves into remote or virtual formats. Those questions are directly relevant to work across dispersed island communities with patchy connectivity. The second workshop looked at a measurement problem. Psychological intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence still lack standardised, cross-cultural tools, which leads to underestimation and weakens comparison between countries. That weakness affects any effort to compare Pacific prevalence figures or report against global targets.

Ali’s presentation, Longitudinal data of gender-based violence and extreme sexual violence in Papua New Guinea, a collaborative project including Dr Mason and a team from ANU, was received well, with several participants contacting us to discuss the findings. Longitudinal evidence is scarce in the Pacific, and tracking violence over time, including its most severe forms, lets researchers see patterns, test whether responses are working, and give policymakers more than a single snapshot.

We came away convinced that strong Pacific research needs ethical rigour and locally owned evidence, and that the region gains most when its researchers are visibly part of these global conversations. The Forum's collaborative nature was a highlight, with many people willing to discuss their work and potential partnerships. The Forum will next occur in 2028, well worth considering if you are working in this space.