Violence against Women and Girls is a Universal Problem of Epidemic Proportions Says Winnie Musonda, UNDP Assistant Representative
Friday 3rd August 2007

Violence against women and girls is a universal problem of epidemic proportions. Perhaps, the most pervasive human rights violation that we know today, it devastates lives, fractures communities, and stalls development, says Ms Winnie Musonda, UNDP Assistant resident representative, at a recently gender sensitivity training of trainers program organized by Pro-Hope International (PHIN).

Statistics, she said, paint a horrifying picture of the social and health consequences of violence against women. Violence against women is a major cause of death and disability for women 16 to 44 years of age, it is a serious 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, she emphasized.

Ms Musonda added that 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 percent more likely to be infected with HIV than those who were not.”

Ms Musonda disclosed that the economic cost of violence against Women is considerable – a 2003 report by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the costs of intimate partner violence in the US alone exceeds US $ 4.1 billion in direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly US $1.8 BILLION, she noted..

Domestic and Intimate partner violence, Musonda said, involves physical and sexual attacks against women in the home, within the family or within an intimate relationship. Women she said are more at risk of experiencing violence in intimate relationships than anywhere else.

On sexual violence Musonda said that although women are more at risk or violence from their intimate partner than from other persons, sexual violence by non-partners is also common in many settings.  “Sexual violence by non-partners refers to violence by a relative, friend, acquaintance, neighbour, work colleague or stranger. Estimates of the prevalence of sexual violence by non-partners are difficult to establish, because in many societies, sexual violence remains an issue of deep shame for women and often for their families. Statistics on rape extracted from police records, for example, are notoriously unreliable because of significant under reporting.”

Ms Musonda further stated that it is estimated that world wide, one in five women become a victim or rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.

About HIV/AIDS and violence, Musonda pointed out that women’s inability to negotiate safer sex and refuse unwanted sex is closely linked to the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

“Unwanted sex-from being unable to say “not” to a partner and be heard, to sexual assault such as rape – results in a higher risk of abrasion and bleeding, providing a ready avenue for transmission of the virus.

A survey amount 1,366 South African women, for instance, reveal that women who have experienced violence by their partners were 48 per cent more likely to be infected with HIV than those who were not. Both realities obliterate women’s ability to protect themselves from infection”.

Young women, she went on, are particularly vulnerable to coerced sex and are increasingly being infected with HIV/AIDS. Over half of new HIV infections worldwide are occurring among young people between the ages of 15 and 24, and more than 60 per cent of HIV positive youth between the ages of 15 and 24 are women, she said.

On crimes against women in war and armed conflict, she also disclosed that some 70 percent of the casualties in recent conflicts have been non-combatants – most of them women and children. Women’s bodies, she added have become part of the battle ground for those who use terror as a tactic of war- they are raped, abducted, humiliated and made to undergo forced pregnancy, sexual abuse, she said.