NEWS

18 April 2005

STATISTICAL OVERVIEW OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

On 11-14 April UNECE hosted an expert group meeting on “Violence against women: a statistical overview, challenges and gaps in data collection and methodology and approaches for overcoming them” organized by the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women in collaboration with UNECE and WHO. Experts invited to the meeting included representatives of national statistical offices, universities, civil society from all regions of the world and international organizations.

Discussions focused on the challenges related to the measurement of all forms of violence (as highlighted in the 1993 UN definition) using both population-based surveys and service-based administrative records (police and court records, hospital records, shelters). A broad range of violence was covered – varying from physical, sexual, emotional – and economic and culturallyspecific forms of violence such as dowry-related violence and female genital cutting/mutilation were also covered. The Expert Group meeting developed some recommendations on how the quality and availability of data can be improved at national level. One of the main recommendations recognizes that the prevalence of violence against women (VAW) can appropriately be measured only through population-based surveys, while service-based statistics can be used to measure issues such as the use of services and the context in which the violence takes place. The meeting also recognized that an improved collection of statistics on VAW should involve all the national stakeholders which are national statistical offices, national women machinery, research institutes, and civil society.

Source: UNECE Weekly, Issue No. 116 – 18-22 April 2005