Authored by: Mads Menoher, NGO CSW/NY Advocacy & Admin Intern
Globally, Gender Based Violence (GBV) still remains a large issue, with about one of three women experiencing GBV in their lifetime.
According to UN Women, in 2022, 48,800 women were murdered by a partner or family member, and there is minimal action by governments to prevent these murders from continuing. This accounts to a murder of a woman or girl every 11 minutes, which the UNiTE campaign is drawing attention to in order to hold leaders accountable for addressing this issue during the Beijing+30 review.
Statistics by the National Domestic Violence Hotline help us understand how one form of GBV–Domestic Violence (DV)–impacts the U.S. alone. The long list of data findings and their corresponding research is listed on the website, which includes side-by-side gender comparisons, underscores the disproportionate impacts that are rarely addressed by the government. These include:
- 24.3% of women and 13.8% of men over 18 experience extreme physical violence
- 4 of 5 victims of DV are women
- 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men experience rape in their lifetime
Unfortunately, these numbers may not be as accurate as we think. Reliable data is hard to come across, as most women tend not to report the abuse and violence that they endure from intimate partners or family members. According to UN administered data on Violence Against Women (VAW), “in the majority of countries with available data, less than 40 percent of survivors seek help of any sort.” The gap in factual cases and data makes it difficult to estimate an exact amount of GBV cases, but one can assume that with many unreported cases, the international average is much higher than the given number of reports.
GBV has become a serious issue across the world, as governments who have not combatted the issue see higher rates of violence against women. The International Rescue Committee highlights the increased risk of GBV comes with those who experience poverty, displacement, conflict and war, and at home stress.
In recent years, research on femicides, GBV, and intimate partner violence has begun to rise, as just in 2022, it was “recorded the highest yearly number of intentional killings of women and girls in the past two decades,” which includes women in all regions of the world. The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence provides a space to share this information, and remind leaders that VAW is still an issue that needs to be addressed.
