Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to (a) create awareness of and (b) encourage access to its research on violence against women and girls for external organisations.

Through the What Works to Prevent Violence research and innovation programme, DFID is pioneering a combination of high policy ambition with world class research on violence against women and girls prevention. The programme has developed a research uptake and stakeholder engagement strategy that will promote awareness and encourage usage of the research. The initial stages of this strategy has seen the creation of a dedicated research access portal (www.whatworks.co.za), updates targeting specialists across the international development community and regular highlighting of the programme in my speeches and meetings with international counterparts.