More Than Meets the Eye....Ending Violence Against Women

Fighting gender-based violence is a major concern for UNIFEM, because violence against women is a universal problem and one of the most widespread violations of human rights. One in three women will suffer some form of violence in her lifetime, becoming part of an epidemic that devastates lives, fractures communities and stalls development. Despite some progress on this issue over the past decade, its horrendous scale remains mostly unacknowledged. New dimensions include the global trafficking of women and girls.

1. Statistics paint a horrifying picture of the social and health consequences of violence against women.
   
2. Violence against women is a major cause of death and disability for women 16 to 44 years of age.
   
3. It 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 .
   
4. Several studies have revealed increasing links between violence against women and HIV/AIDS. Women who have experienced violence are at a higher risk of HIV infection: a survey among 1,366 South African women showed that women who were beaten by their partners were 48 per cent more likely to be infected with HIV than those who were not.

The economic cost of violence against women is considerable — a 2003 report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the costs of intimate partner violence in the United States alone exceed US$5.8 billion per year: US$4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly US$1.8 billion . Whereas the figures calculated in miscellaneous studies vary considerably from country to country due to different methodologies applied, it has been established clearly that the economic costs of violence against women are enormous.
They impoverish individuals, families, communities and governments and reduce the economic development of each nation.