Violence against Women: UN Women is turning the tide

2011 was a promising year for UN Women in its campaign to reverse trends of endemic violence against women, to provide support for abused women and girls and to make inroads in communities in which gender-based violence is a daily reality. UN Women calls on the citizens of the world community to stand up and take action.

UN Women is looking to build worldwide networks of young leaders who will take up the challenge to end gender-based violence in their communities. The UNO's UN Women is asking for young leaders to publicise that they or their organizations do at the e-mail address saynotoviolence@unwomen.org.

Apart from providing support through a knowledge centre (http://www.endvawnow.org/en/), UN Women also provides other resources for initiatives to get started. One such initiative is Sheba Rakesh's Pankh Organization in India, reported recently in Pravda.Ru (*).

The statistics are shocking - between 15 to 75% of women in every community suffer from some sort of violence. Up to 70% of these violent acts are perpetrated by intimate partners. Two women are murdered every day in Guatemala, on average; in India, there are many thousands of dowry-related deaths every year; in so-called developed nations such as the USA, Canada and Israel, 40 to 70% of women were murdered by intimate partners; on a worldwide basis, 50% of sexual assaults are committed against children under 16; up to 150 million women and girls suffer some kind of violence yearly; 30% of first sexual experiences are rapes or attempted rapes.

Three million girls a year in Africa are submitted to female genital mutilation; 100 to 140 million women and girls live with the scars of this practice; 60 million children a year are forced to make commitments in marriage ceremonies; 80% of human trafficking is committed against women and girls; 79% of these, or 632,000 women and girls a year, are trafficked for purposes of sexual exploitation. 379,200 women and girls are subjected to conditions of sexual slavery every year.

In parts of Europe, between 40 and 50% of women are subjected to unwanted sexual advances; in Asia, up to half the women suffer sexual harassment at work.

UN Women is working

2011 proved that UN Women is working and making huge inroads into ending gender-based violence. Thousands of campaigns were launched around the world raising awareness, galvanising young people to take up the challenge, creating initiatives in their communities to spread awareness of the issue and to draw up schemes to protect and respect the condition of the woman.

* http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/30-10-2011/119470-pankh_india-0/

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru