VAWG Strategy 2025: Freedom Charity’s response
The UK Government published Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls on 18 December 2025. The strategy was updated in 2026 and is accompanied by an action plan covering the 2026–2029 Spending Review period.
The Government’s stated ambition is to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. The strategy is organised around three objectives: prevention and early intervention, relentless pursuit of perpetrators, and support for victims and survivors.
Read the official VAWG strategy on GOV.UK.
Forced marriage, FGM and honour-based abuse
The strategy expressly includes so-called honour-based abuse (HBA), including forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM). The accompanying action plan commits government departments and the Crown Prosecution Service to coordinate work on prevention, investigation and prosecution. It says FGM will be considered specifically because of its distinct challenges.
The action plan also commits the Government to legislate for a statutory definition of HBA with accompanying multi-agency statutory guidance. Separate measures announced in 2026 progressed that commitment.
Freedom Charity uses Dishonour Abuse as its preferred term because the charity’s position is that there is no honour in abuse. When discussing legislation, government policy or search terminology, we also use the established term honour-based abuse so readers can identify the official framework and find the relevant guidance.
Read Freedom Charity’s Dishonour Abuse and honour-based abuse guidance.
Prevention and early intervention
The strategy places substantial emphasis on prevention, early intervention, healthy relationships and work with children and young people. Its action plan also addresses the role of frontline professionals in recognising HBA and knowing what action to take.
Freedom Charity’s own work includes school safeguarding education, books and lesson resources on forced marriage and FGM, professional training, public-awareness work and routes to support. Freedom’s separate forced-marriage and FGM lesson resources have received the PSHE Association Quality Mark.
Freedom Charity’s view is that prevention should give young people clear, age-appropriate information about consent, coercion, bodily autonomy and safe routes to help, while ensuring that responsibility for safeguarding remains with adults and professionals.
PSHE educational resources
Safeguarding education for schools
Professional response
The Government action plan says frontline professionals must understand honour-based abuse, know what action to take and work effectively across agencies.
Freedom Charity’s safeguarding position is that professionals should respond to risk without investigating on behalf of the person at risk, confronting relatives or attempting family mediation where doing so could increase danger. Concerns should be handled through appropriate safeguarding procedures and specialist advice.
Freedom provides professional safeguarding training on forced marriage, FGM, honour-based abuse / Dishonour Abuse and related harmful practices. Training complements rather than replaces statutory guidance, local safeguarding procedures or professional duties.
Professional safeguarding training.
Men and boys
The Government published a separate explanatory note on men and boys alongside the strategy. It recognises both that women and girls are disproportionately affected by many forms of VAWG and that men and boys can also be victims of crimes including honour-based abuse.
Freedom Charity’s Not in My Name work engages boys and young men in prevention. Freedom’s position is that prevention should involve boys and men without shifting responsibility for abuse away from perpetrators or placing the burden of prevention on girls.
FGM reporting and protection
The action plan includes a review of the FGM Mandatory Reporting Duty. In England and Wales, regulated health and social care professionals and teachers have a legal duty to report known cases of FGM in girls under 18 to the police; suspected or at-risk cases still require safeguarding action under the relevant procedures.
Freedom Charity’s view is that a reporting duty works only when professionals can recognise risk early and know how to escalate concerns safely. Schools, health services, social care and police may all have a role before harm occurs.
FGM information, safeguarding and NHS care routes.
Support must be safe to access
Some people affected by forced marriage, FGM or Dishonour Abuse may be monitored at home or on their devices. Support routes therefore need to take account of surveillance, hidden phones and the risks created by unsafe family contact.
Freedom Charity’s helpline page gives the current charity contact route together with statutory and specialist alternatives. It also contains online and device-safety guidance. The Freedom App provides information and routes to help but is not an emergency service.
Current helpline and online-safety information
Freedom Charity App
Freedom Charity’s policy position
Freedom Charity welcomes the strategy’s focus on prevention, professional understanding, perpetrator accountability and victim support. The charity will continue to argue for:
- early safeguarding action when forced marriage, FGM or family-based coercion is suspected;
- consistent professional training and multi-agency practice;
- safe handling of disclosures without inappropriate family mediation;
- prevention education that gives children clear language and routes to help;
- recognition of networked and multiple-perpetrator abuse; and
- language that places responsibility on perpetrators rather than attaching “honour” to abuse.
These are Freedom Charity’s policy positions. They should be distinguished from the Government’s own commitments in the strategy and action plan.
Official sources
- Freedom from Violence and Abuse: cross-government strategy
- VAWG strategy action plan
- Men and boys explanatory note
- Government announcement on statutory HBA definition and guidance
Reviewed 21 September 2026 against the current GOV.UK strategy and action plan.