Every 11 minutes, a woman or girl is killed by an intimate partner or family member: UN

Violence against women, a universal age-old evil persisting around the world, shows few signs of abating especially in developing countries and regions afflicted by armed conflicts. Violence against women and girls is the most pervasive human rights violation in the world, targeting half of humanity.

“Every 11 minutes, a woman or girl is killed by an intimate partner or family member — and we know that other stresses, from the COVID-19 pandemic to economic turmoil, inevitably lead to even more physical and verbal abuse,” warned UN Chief Antonio Guterres, marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November. He called on governments to increase funding by 50 per cent to women’s rights organizations and similar movements by 2026.

UN estimates show that one in three women globally experience physical and sexual violence usually at the hands of an intimate partner. Violence starts devastatingly early and almost one in four adolescent girls aged 15-19, who have had an intimate relationship, experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner.

To draw attention to the necessity of working together to banish this scourge, UN Women has kicked off a global umbrella campaign called “UNiTE! Activism to End Violence against Women and Girls”. It aims at galvanizing activism by women’s rights movements, underpinned by legislation and mobilization of local communities to protect girls and women.

Women and girls also face rampant online violence, from misogynistic hate speech to sexual harassment, image abuse and aggression by predators. “This discrimination, violence and abuse comes at a steep cost. It limits women’s and girls’ participation in all walks of life, denies their basic rights and freedoms and blocks the equal economic recovery and sustainable growth that our world needs,” Guterres pointed out.

Yet, governments are not doing enough to design, fund and implement measures to protect women, and grassroots activists and civil society groups are not getting enough support. Laws are not being applied and respected widely enough, so survivors of violence are not yet seeing their rights to justice and support being upheld by authorities everywhere.

In too many societies and cultures, enough support is not being given to public campaigns that challenge patriarchal norms and promote different forms of masculinities that reject misogyny and violence.

Violence is often worst against the hardest to reach, e.g., women with disabilities in developing countries are two to four times more likely than other women to experience violence. There is also clear evidence that gender-based violence increases in scale and severity in conflict situations. An estimated 20 to 30% of women and girls have experienced sexual violence by non-partners in conflict-affected regions.

Natural disasters also aggravate all types of gender-based violence, as witnessed during bush fires in Australia from 2019 to 2022, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and in tropical cyclones in Vanuatu in 2011.

Existing forms of gender-based violence have also grown online as hardline movements have flourished. That has shrunk the space for civil society and encouraged a backlash against women’s rights organizations, including a rise in attacks against women human rights defenders and activists.