Invest to prevent violence against women and girls

The UN Women’s theme for International Day for the Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls, which will be observed on Saturday, November 25, 2023, is “UNITE! Invest to prevent violence against women and girls.”
Ahead of this important day, a report, “What Counts? The State of Funding for the Prevention of Gender-based Violence against Women and Girls”, was launched by UN Women partners with the Equality Institute and the Accelerator for GBV Prevention, working together under the Collective Commitment of the Generation Equality Action Coalition on GBV. It reveals a concerning reality: gender-based violence, an issue of alarming proportions, garners only 0.2% of global aid and development funding.
According to UN Women, when world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, they recognised that ending violence against women and girls was a prerequisite for the achievement of the development agenda. Goal 5 on gender equality includes a specific target to end all forms of violence against women, including trafficking, other forms of sexual violence, and harmful practices.
Despite this, the body pointed out, resources dedicated to addressing the issue still do not match the scale of the challenge. It also emphasised that allocating adequate resources to prevent and address violence against women is not only a legal obligation and a moral imperative, but a sound investment, too.
However, as the world marks the halfway point to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the urgency to end violence against women and girls has never been greater. UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2023 report reveals that 245 million women and girls continue to face physical and/or sexual violence from their intimate partners each year.
A staggering 86 per cent of women and girls live in countries without robust legal protections against violence, or in countries where data are not available. Additionally, the impacts of economic crises, conflicts, and climate change have heightened the vulnerability of women and girls to violence.
“It is time to get serious and fund what we know works to stop violence against women and girls. Invest in reforming and implementing laws and multisectoral policies; provide services to survivors; scale up evidence-based prevention interventions. With the will and contributions of all stakeholders and sectors, we can unlock financing, track budget allocations, and increase gender-responsive budgeting. We have the solutions and resources to end violence against women and girls in our lifetimes. It is our choice,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous at the official commemoration event for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in New York.
Violence against women has been declared a global pandemic and human rights violation. In the male-dominated world view, the role of women in the family, home, relationship and society has been taken for granted, and this taken-for-granted-ness has led to the perpetuation of violence in several forms.
Also launched today is a new research brief with estimates on gender-related killings of women and girls, produced jointly by UNODC and UN Women, it shows that, globally, nearly 89,000 women and girls were killed intentionally in 2022, the highest yearly number recorded in the past two decades, indicating that the number of female homicides is not decreasing. Most killings of women and girls are gender motivated.
In 2022, 55 per cent of the intentional killings of women (around 48,800) were committed by intimate partners or other family members. This means that, on average, more than 133 women or girls were killed every day by someone in their own family.
Beyond the direct medical and judicial costs, violence against women takes a toll on household and national budgets through lost income and productivity. In Guyana, the Women and Gender Equality Commission, which joined with many other organisations to speak out on the occasion, also acknowledged that one of the major challenges to efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls worldwide is financing.
As a result, they pointed to the glaring reality that resources for initiatives to prevent and end violence against women and girls are severely lacking.
In their bid to reinforce the point that there is much more work to be done in Guyana to ensure that the Prevention of Discrimination Act and the Constitutional provisions on non-discrimination and equality are enforced, they pointed to the overall economic impact of tackling the existing issues, which can actually contribute to the prevention of violence against women and girls.