Not a minute more: ending violence against women.

Abstract

Violence against women and girls kills and maims vast numbers; it fills their lives with pain and terror from which some never recover. It exists in every country of the world in some form and the statistics paint a horrifying picture: 40 per cent of all female homicide victims in the United Kingdom are killed by their intimate partners; every year thousands of women suffer dowry-related deaths or are disfigured by acid thrown in their faces by rejected suitors in Bangladesh Colombia India Nigeria and Pakistan. In 2002 the Council of Europe declared violence against women a major cause of death and disability for women 16 to 44 years of age and called it a public health emergency. And in the United States the health-related costs of rape physical assault stalking and homicide by intimate partners are more than $5.8 billion every single year. Globally the World Bank estimates that violence against women is as serious a cause of death and incapacity among women of reproductive age as cancer and a greater cause of ill health than traffic accidents and malaria combined. One in three women throughout the world will suffer this violence in her lifetime; she will be beaten raped assaulted trafficked harassed or forced to submit to harmful practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM). In the majority of cases the abuser will be a member of the woman’s own family or someone known to her. (excerpt)