Gender-based violence (GBV) has been receiving greater attention in research, creating a need for further research on the association between violence and natural disasters. This review focuses primarily on violence against women and girls (VAWG). The purpose of this paper is to examine existing research on the association between VAWG and natural disasters and to identify gaps in current research on this issue. This work draws its findings from a combination of literature reviews, case studies, reports, and grey literature addressing the issues of gender-based violence in post-natural disasters settings. The search was conducted via the Scopus database and Disaster Lit. The narrative analysis considers sources that describe a change in prevalence of VAWG, including, but not limited to, sexual gender-based violence, intimate partner violence, physical violence, human trafficking, and psychological violence in post-natural disaster settings. The findings show that very few sources globally provide statistics on VAWG pre- or even post-natural disaster, indicating an urgent need to increase research on the prevalence of VAWG for better understanding of the phenomena. Since VAWG is a global public health, humanitarian, and political issue that exists in countries, regardless of their GDP level, players involved with disasters such as social workers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and political leaders would benefit from data and research on the topic. The data would better equip populations affected by disasters and humanitarian workers with tools to prevent consequences induced by VAWG from occurring and how to respond to disasters.
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