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| Violence Against Women and Girls |
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Globally, gender-based violence is the most pervasive and least recognized human rights violation. It affects every race, class, culture, ethnicity, age and country. Women are potential victims of violence at every stage of their lives.
Beyond individual consequences, gender-based violence has public health and economic impacts, as businesses and public health systems often bear the costs of treating injuries related to violence against women and girls.
Violence against women takes many forms, including prenatal sex selection, female infanticide, female genital mutilation, sexual harassment, abuse and assault, dowry violence, honor killings, domestic violence, battering, marital rape, forced prostitution and trafficking.
Though gender-based violence takes many forms, it is deeply rooted in one source: inequality.
 Around the world, 1 in 3 women will suffer some
form of violence in her lifetime, becoming part of
an epidemic that devastates lives, fractures
communities, and stalls development. UNIFEM |
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In no country in the world are women safe from domestic and intimate violence. Half of the women who die from homicides are killed by their current or former husbands or partners. UNIFEM |
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More than 2 million girls between the ages of 5 and 15 are trafficked, sold or coerced into prostitution each year. UNFPA |
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Violence Against Women is both a cause and a consequence of rising rates of HIV infection. By December 2004 women accounted for 47% of all people living with HIV worldwide, and for 57% in sub-Saharan Africa. UNAIDS/WHO |
At least 130 million women have been forced to
undergo Female Genital Circumcision. Another 2 million |
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are at risk each year. UNFPA Read More about other Harmful Traditional Practices |
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Large-scale, organized and systematic rape as a weapon of war has been documented in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Peru, Somalia, Uganda and Sudan. UNIFEM |
| In no country in the world are women safe from gender violence. |
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| Domestic violence is the major cause of death and disability for European women ages 16 to 44, and accounts for more death and ill-health than cancer or traffic accidents. |
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In the US, a woman is raped every 6 minutes; a woman is battered every 15 seconds. 700,000 women are sexually assaulted annually; 14.8 percent of them are raped before the age of 17. |
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In South Africa, more women are shot
at home in acts of domestic violence than are shot by strangers on the streets or by intruders. |
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The Russian government estimates 14,000 women were killed by relatives in 1999,
yet the country still has no law specifically addressing domestic violence. |
In India, more than 7,000 women will be murdered by their families and in-laws
in disputes over dowries. |
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In Peru, a study of 12- to 16-year-old girls giving birth found that 90 percent of them were pregnant from rape, often incest. |
In Bangladesh, 200 women this year will
be horribly disfigured when their spurned
husbands or suitors burn them with acid. |
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This year, more than 15,000 women will be sold into sexual slavery in China.
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