cover image: Domestic violence and women’s health in India

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Domestic violence and women’s health in India

15 Feb 2022

Gender-based violence (GBV) or violence against women and girls is regarded as a global pandemic that affects one in every three women across their lifetime. An estimated 736 million women become victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), or non-partner sexual violence, or both, at least once in their life. The international community has long acknowledged the severity of the problem. In 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action called for the elimination of violence against women. A decade later, in 2015, the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which included a global target to eliminate “all forms of violence against women and girls in public and private spheres.” In 2016, the World Health Assembly Resolution 69 called for a global plan of action to strengthen the role of the health system within a national multi-sector response to address interpersonal violence, particularly against women and young girls. Despite all these mandates, however, 49 countries have yet to adopt a formal policy on domestic violence. This violence—which has serious short- and long-term consequences on women’s health and well-being—disproportionately affects women in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Women aged 15-49 years living in the least developed countries have a 37% lifetime prevalence of domestic violence. Among younger women (15-24), the risk is even higher, with one of every four women who have ever been in a relationship facing some form of violence. Indeed, domestic violence is an all-pervasive public-health concern that women face in various forms across different parts of the world. In England, for example, the 2020 Crime Survey reported a 9% increase from 2019 in domestic-abuse related crimes.9 In the United States (US), the number of women who have ever reported experiencing domestic violence increased by 42% from 2016. The 1993 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women defines ‘gender-based violence’ as “an act that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women (including threats of such acts), or coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life.”
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Authors

Shoba Suri, Mona, Debosmita Sarkar

Published in
India

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