By: United Nations Development Fund For Women
Violence against women and girls is a problem of pandemic proportions. Based on country
data available,1 up to 70 percent of women experience physical or s*xual violence from men
in their lifetime — the majority from husbands, intimate partners or someone they know.
Among women aged 15–44, acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer,
malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.2 Perhaps the most pervasive human rights
violation that we know today, violence against women devastates lives, fractures communities,
and stalls development. It takes many forms and occurs in many places — domestic violence
in the home, s*xual abuse of girls in schools, s*xual harassment at work, rape by husbands or
strangers, in refugee camps or as a tactic of war.
Femicide – the murder of women because they are women
• In the United States, one-third of women murdered each year are killed by intimate
partners.3
• In South Africa, a woman is killed every 6 hours by an intimate partner.4
• In India, 22 women were killed each day in dowry-related murders in 2007.5
• In Guatemala, two women are murdered, on average, each day.6
Trafficking
• Women and girls constitute 80 percent of the estimated 800,000 people trafficked
annually,7 with the majority (79 percent) trafficked for s*xual exploitation.8
Harmful practices
• Approximately 100 to 140 million girls and women in the world have experienced female
genital mutilation/cutting, with more than 3 million girls in Africa annually at risk of the
practice.9
• More than 60 million girls worldwide are child brides, married before the age of 18,
primarily in South Asia (31.1 million) and sub-Saharan Africa (14.1 million).10
s*xual violence against women and girls
• An estimated 150 million girls under 18 suffered some form of s*xual violence in 2002 alone.11
• As many as 1 in 4 women experience physical and/or s*xual violence during pregnancy,12
which increases the likelihood of having a miscarriage, stillbirth and abortion.13 Up to 53
Posted By: anita moore
Sunday, November 28th 2010 at 9:14AM
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