EDITORIAL: The global scale of sexual violence against women and girls (VAWG) is staggering. In its recently published report the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, says more than 370 million women and girls alive today experienced rape or sexual assault before reaching the age of 18.
When ‘non-contact’ forms of sexual violence, such as online or verbal abuse are included, the number of females affected rises to 650 million – one in 5. These statistics drawn from national data and international survey programmes carried out in 120 countries between 2010 and 2022, shows VAWG cuts across geographical, cultural and economic boundaries.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of victims with 79 million girls and women affected, followed by 75 million in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, 73 million in Central and Southern Asia, 68 million in Europe and Northern America, 45 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, 29 million in Northern Africa and Western Asia, and 6 million in Oceania.
The issue, however, is much larger than the present data indicates since victims, particularly in societies shaped by patriarchy such as ours, keep such abuses secret for fear of social stigmatisation. Many suffer rape or sexual assault during childhood, notes the report.
Sexual violence against children, as the UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell voiced her lament, inflicts deep and lasting trauma, often by someone they know and trust, in places where they should feel safe. Predictably, VAWG is the highest in what the report describes as ‘fragile settings’. These, of course, are countries where the institutional protections are weak and misogynist structures strong. Worst affected are women and girls in conflict zones.
Use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is widespread in certain conflict-ridden African countries — in several cases even the UN peacekeeping forces have been found involved in sexual abuses — as well as Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Also vulnerable to VAWG are those displaced by war or climate change-induced natural disasters.
Turning the tide on these pervasive crimes is an overwhelming challenge, which calls for determined efforts for change. In developed countries, better policing can help. In others like Pakistan the place to start is resolving the misogynist structures.
Towards that end, governmental policies ought to be focused on economic empowerment of women and girls by enhancing access to education, and opening the doors to their participation in the highest level of decision-making processes.
No less important, men and boys need to be better prepared to accept and respect women and girls as equal beings. Altering deeply ingrained attitudes will take time and patience. That can and must be done not as a favour to the female kind, but to socio-economic progress of whichever society they belong to.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024