Dubai: One in three women around the world are victims of violence, and only four out of 10 survivors seek help, the UN said on Wednesday.
Violence against women and girls remains “one of the most serious and the most tolerated human rights violations, both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality and discrimination,” UN Women executive director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said in a statement to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25.
“We say again: It is not acceptable. It is not inevitable. It can be prevented.”
According to UN officials, one in three women worldwide has experienced physical or another form of violence, most often by an intimate partner.
However, less than four in 10 survivors of such violence, in most countries, seek help, Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said.
“Violence against women and girls includes domestic and physical violence, human trafficking and harmful practices, such as forced child marriage, gender-based infanticide and female genital mutilation,” he said.
More than 140 million girls and women have undergone some form of female genital mutilation, also called female circumcision, around the world.
In another form of violence, one in every three girls in developing countries, is married before reaching the age of 18, and one in nine before 15, UN figures showed.
While violence deprives women and girls of their human rights to health, education and participation in their communities affairs, “survivors often lead lives shadowed by fear and stigma,” added a UN statement.
“We have made progress in improving the laws that distinguish these acts and others as ones of violence and invasion of human rights. Some 125 countries have laws against sexual harassment, 119 have laws against domestic violence, but only 52 countries have laws on marital rape,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
Next month, an international meeting will discuss ways to end violence against women.
It “will discuss what is working on the ground and how to prevent violence ,” Oisika Chakrabarti, an official at UN women told Gulf News.
The conference, scheduled in Istanbul, Turkey on December 9 and 10 will be attended by senior officials from around the world, high level experts, academics, practitioners and women advocates.
