End Violence Against Women

 

One in three women worldwide have been subject to sexual or physical violence during their lifetime, according to a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO).

About 31 percent of women aged 15-49, or up to 852 million women, have experienced physical or sexual violence, the WHO said in what it called the largest-ever such study. True figures are likely far higher because of under-reporting of sexual abuse, a heavily stigmatised crime.

“Violence against women is endemic in every country and culture, causing harm to millions of women and their families...” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

A husband or intimate partner is the most common perpetrator and a disproportionate number of victims are in the poorest countries, the report said.

Heidi Stoeckl, who was involved in the research, highlighted the fact that such figures have not changed over the past decade. She underscored governments’ lack of action to implement programmes preventing it.

Women across Mexico took to the streets on Monday to protest the crisis of violence they face on a daily basis, fueled by what they say is an out of touch government, and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's support for a politician accused of rape.

According to public policy think tank Mexico Evalua, which analyzed government data, five million women were victims of sexual violence in the second half of 2020 in Mexico, including harassment, sexual abuse, attempted rape or rape, the vast majority of which did not get reported. Mexican government data shows at least 939 cases of femicide, murders that specifically targeted victims because they were women, occurred last year. The crime rose nearly 130% between 2015 and 2020.

 Lopez Obrador has stood by Felix Salgado Macedonio, a candidate for the governor of Guerrero state, who faces five accusations of sexual abuse, including rape. The  women’s movement poses a challenge to Amlo’s claim to be the champion of Mexico’s dispossessed. He has failed to address the pervasive violence that kills more than 10 women a day and forces many more to live in fear. Instead he has suggested that women’s groups are being manipulated by his conservative enemies. He casts doubt on the rising rates of domestic violence registered during the pandemic lockdown, suggesting that most emergency calls were fake.

Arussi Unda, the spokeswoman for Las Brujas del Mar, a feminist collective based in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, explained, “We are not asking for crazy things. We’re asking that women get to work, that women aren’t killed and girls aren’t raped. It’s not insane, not eccentric, it’s human rights.”

In Turkey thousands of people joined a Women’s Day march in Istanbul to denounce violence against women in Turkey, where more than 400 women were killed last year.

Thousands of women marched through Kiev, Ukraine's capital, on International Women's Day to draw attention to domestic violence. Over the past year, the police received 174,386 statements of domestic violence.