On 10 October 2006, painting a grim picture of the extent of violence against women in all parts of the world, senior United Nations officials urged everyone to fully support Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s recent in-depth study on the problem, which lays out legislative and other recommendations to combat the scourge.
One out of three women is a victim of violence at least once in their life, according to the UN's report published yesterday and which is a world-wide phenomenon. The surveys carried out in 71 countries indicate that an important % of women are victims of physical violence, psychological or sexual abus. The report says that physical violence is mostly inflicted by the sexual partner. It indicates that the death of women is many times marked by sexual violence. It is estimated thatbetween 40 and 70% of the women deceased in Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the United States are murdered by the husband or friend. In Colombia, in average, every week a woman is killed by her husband or ex-husband. Hundreds of women have been kidnapped, raped and murdered in the city of Juarez, in the north of Mexico. The report equally makes reference to the genital mutilations suffered by some 130 million girls in the world, mainly in the African continent. Violence on women has sometimes a sexual character in times of armed conflicts and the UN estimates that during the genocide in Ruanda, in 1994, between 250,000 and 500,000 women were violated and between 20,000 and 50,000 other women suffered the same during the conflict in Bosnia, in the beginning of the nineties.
“Violence against women as the report says is not a characteristic of some countries… it’s really a global problem that has to be addressed. According to the quantitative estimates, which certainly underestimate the amount of violence that occurs, at least one out of three women experienced violence at some stage in their lives,” said Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs José Antonio Ocampo at a joint press conference in New York.
read further:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20205&Cr=women&Cr1=violence
http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/419/74/PDF/N0641974.pdf?OpenElement
1 commentaire:
The fact that 1 on 3 women will be at least once in her life subject to any form of violence is very significant. We tend to forget that the gender related violence is not only a problem of the developing countries, but also of the so called "1st world". Also, the fact of the increasing phenomenon of violence against women, youth and children (this must be seen through the lens of a major information campaign and more ressources for the women that decide to say loud that they have been abused, though).
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