FACT SHEET: Sexual Violence

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All forms of violence against women – from beatings, psychological abuse, disfigurement and forced labour to rape, incest and other forms of sexual violence – are an affront to the human rights of women and universal standards of decency. But sexual violence is now gaining greater attention internationally because of its growing use as a weapon of war and the extreme brutality with which it is being carried out.

Sexual violence refers to any violence – physical or psychological – that targets sexuality or is enacted by sexual means. It includes rape and attempted rape, and such acts as forcing a person to strip naked in public, coercing two subjects to perform sexual acts on one another or to harm one another in a sexual manner, mutilating a person's genitals or a woman's breasts, and sexual slavery.^[i]

Sexual violence is a form of gender-based violence, and boys and men may be targets.^[ii] However, inequality of power is the foundation of all such attacks. Because women and girls have inferior status in virtually all societies, and because they are often at a physical disadvantage, they are the primary targets of sexual violence.

A general climate of indifference to women’s fate perpetuates sexual violence worldwide – at the hands of domestic and intimate partners; by non-partners such as teachers, relatives, other acquaintances or strangers; in harmful traditional practices; in conflict situations; or for commercial purposes, such as in trafficking.

Eradicating sexual violence is a profoundly political challenge, because it requires confronting the unequal social, political and economic power of men and women, and the ways in which this inequality is institutionalized at all levels of society.^[iii]

The Current Situation

One in five women worldwide will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.[iv]
Sexual violence is under-reported: many women feel shame and fear rejection by their families and communities as ‘dishonoured’, soiled or unmarriageable. Economic and social dependence upon men in many societies contributes to under-reporting.
Victims of sexual violence often suffer not just immediate injury but also severe long-term health damage: fistulas (tears in the vagina, bladder and rectum that cause incontinence); uterine prolapse or ruptures; infertility; and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological damage.
Some 150 million girls and 73 million boys under 18 experienced forced sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual violence during 2002.^[v]

Violence by domestic and intimate partners

Women who experience violence are at higher risk for HIV infection: a survey of 1,366 South African women found those beaten by partners were 48 per cent more likely to be infected with HIV than those who were not.
Violence may also follow HIV infection: a woman is usually blamed and may be abused for bringing it into the relationship, even if her partner is unfaithful.
A 2003 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated the cost of intimate partner violence at $5.8 billion per year in the United States alone--$4.1 billion for direct medical care and $1.8 billion in lost productivity.

Harmful traditional practices

Some forms of sexual violence have been perpetrated against women in some places for so long that they are accepted cultural norms. They lead to death, disability, physical and psychological harm for millions of women every year.

Female genital mutilation/cutting has been inflicted as a coming-of-age ritual on more than 130 million living girls and women, mainly in Africa and the Middle East. Two million girls are at risk every year, including many in immigrant communities in Europe, the Americas and Australia.
Child marriage forces girls in many countries into sexual relations before their bodies are mature, jeopardizing their health and raising their risk for obstetric fistula, HIV infection, and dropping out of school. ‘Bride money’ may induce poor families to marry off their daughters as young as six or seven. More than 57 per cent of Afghan girls are married before age 16.

Sexual violence during armed conflict

Sexual violation and torture of civilian women and girls during periods of armed conflict is ‘one of history’s great silences’.^[vi] For centuries it was tacitly accepted as unavoidable; only in 1998 did the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declare rape to be a war crime.

Almost half of indictments by the International Criminal Court and other international tribunals have been on charges of rape or sexual assault.
Violence against women in conflict situations is largely based on traditional views of women as property and sexual objects. Prescribed clothing and roles make them transmitters of culture and symbols of nation or community, so that violence against them can be an attack against the values or ‘honour’ of a society. Deliberately impregnating women is a further assault on cultural mores and family integrity. For these reasons, sexual violence is a potent weapon of war and terror.
The victims of modern armed conflict are far more likely to be civilians than soldiers, especially women and children. They are raped, abducted, humiliated and forced into pregnancy and sexual slavery – sometimes at random, sometimes as a deliberate act of war.
The deliberate infection of women with HIV has become a weapon between ethnic groups, as in the recent Sudan conflicts, where hundreds of women were raped daily in
As many as 60,000 women were raped in the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.^[vii] In Sierra Leone, up to 64,000 women suffered war-related sexual violence.
Women and girls fleeing conflict zones risk sexual violence from combatants, bandits, border guards, traffickers and other refugees, who may all demand sex in return for safety or food.
Medical attention, social services, protection, psycho-social support, and legal remedies for survivors of conflict-related violence are woefully inadequate or nonexistent in conflict zones and displaced-person camps, despite many NGOs’ efforts to provide assistance.
Displaced women and girls living in refugee camps risk sexual violence from other refugees, guards and peacekeepers, as well as rape, beatings and abduction when they leave the camp for necessities such as food, fuel and water.
Rather than receiving justice, survivors of sexual violence during conflict are often stigmatized. Wives are rejected by husbands; girls are rendered ‘unmarriageable’; and survivors risk being accused and punished for adultery, ‘illegal pregnancy’ or tainting family ‘honour’. They are then more vulnerable to poverty, despair and further sexual exploitation.

Trafficking in women and girls

Trafficking is recruitment and transport of people using threats, fraud, trickery, coercion, isolation and debt bondage to keep them in forced labour or servitude, including sexual slavery.

Some organizations estimate that up to four million persons are trafficked every year, most into farms and sweatshops. Most but not all victims are female.
Trafficking is often connected to organized crime and official corruption. Fully 127 countries are listed as countries of origin for trafficked people, and 137 as countries of destination.
During conflict situations, the economic situation of many women deteriorates so drastically that the fraudulent offer of refuge and employment elsewhere may be irresistible.
Human trafficking is highly profitable, generating some US$7-12 billion per year.^[viii]

What must/can be done

Sexual violence requires a “multi-sector” approach—from the health sector (doctors, nurses, traditional healers, midwives, health ministries), psycho-social sector (social workers, teachers, welfare ministries); legal/justice sector (lawyers, judges, legislators, NGOs, ministries of justice); and security sector (police, national and international armed services, interior ministries).
Women and girls must be included as decision-makers in designing programmes to deal with sexual violence. These should include protection mechanisms and policy reform; greater response capacity for health, legal and security systems; and respectful services to survivors.
Needs of sexual violence survivors include guarantees of safety and confidentiality, and the right to know their options and to choose among medical, social and legal responses.
Although the 1981 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) does not explicitly mention violence against women, the Committee to Eliminate Discrimination against Women, which interprets and monitors CEDAW implementation, clarified in 1992 that parties to CEDAW are obligated to take all appropriate means to eliminate violence against women.
As of 2007, more than 100 countries had laws or policies barring violence against women and ending impunity for perpetrators. By 2006, 93 countries had laws prohibiting human trafficking. But many laws have loopholes, such as allowing impunity for rapists who marry their victims, and many laws are poorly enforced.
The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (2000) calls for special measures by all parties to armed conflict to prevent, investigate and remedy gender-based violence in conflict areas.
On September 30, 2009, the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1888 called for the UN to appoint a special representative to help prevent sexual violence in conflict areas, better respond to victims, and strengthen judicial systems to address the problem of impunity.

What is UNFPA doing?

UNFPA is active in United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign, which aims to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls in all parts of the world. The campaign brings together a host of UN agencies and offices to galvanize action across the UN system to prevent and punish violence against women.
UNFPA works with countries on laws and action plans to protect women and end impunity for perpetrators of violence. It also supports data collection and analysis to better understand the scope of the problem, and advocacy efforts.
In the context of humanitarian response, the Fund plays an important role in implementing Security Council resolutions 1325 and 1820 on Women, Peace and Security. It is part of the Stop Rape Now campaign, and coordinated development of UN Guidelines on Management of Sexual and Gender Based Violence in Humanitarian Situations.
UNFPA and other agencies collaborating on the Clinton Global Initiative aim to expand surveillance of sexual violence against girls in developing and emerging countries; develop interventions for countries to use to reduce the incidence of sexual violence against girls; and launch a major media campaign to elevate awareness of the problem and motivate social and behavioral change.
Through the Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting, UNFPA and UNICEF hope to encourage many countries to abandon this harmful traditional practice in a decade.
UNFPA is engaged in documenting successful approaches to ending gender-based violence through strategic, comprehensive and culturally sensitive approaches.
Programmatic work on engaging men and boys to address issues of violence against women has also been initiated in countries globally.
The Fund also enlists key influencers of cultural norms, from religious leaders to popular culture icons, to change cultural norms related to violence.
The Fund partners with International Organization for Migration to address trafficking in programme countries and is supporting the development of guidelines for programme planners, health service managers and others.

Resources

i Gay J. McDougall, Special Rapporteur, Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-like Practices during Armed Conflict, United Nations, New York, 1998, E/CN.4/Sub. 2/1998/13, pp. 7-8.
ii Inter-agency Standing Committee, Guidelines for Gender-based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Settings: Focusing on Prevention of and Response to Sexual Violence in Emergencies, (Field-test version), Geneva: IASC, 2005.
iii Human Rights Watch (1999) State of the World Report
iv Except where noted, facts in this section are from UNIFEM, “Facts and Figures on Violence Against Women,”; the Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Women, 2006; and UNIFEM, “It’s a Global Emergency,”
v WHO, 2004
vi UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women (2005); cited in J. Ward, “Gender-based Violence among Conflict-affected Populations: Humanitarian Program Responses,” Listening to the Silences: Women and War, (Konnklikje Brill, Netherlands, 2005): 67.
vii UNIFEM Facts & Figures on Crimes against Women in Situations of Armed Conflict. 2007. (UNIFEM drew this figure from the following report, which is not available online: Vlachova, Biason (eds). Women in an Insecure World. Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. 2005.)
viii Referred to by María José Alcalá et al. in State of World Population 2006. A Passage to Hope. Women and International Migration. UNFPA. 2006