Rates vary with prosperity, but countries around the world are well short of meeting the UN’s elimination target by 2030.
Despite some progress over the last decade, physical and sexual intimate partner violence towards women continues to be highly prevalent globally, according to a study in The Lancet.
The paper itself looked at responses from 2 million women who participated in 366 individual studies over 161 countries and areas.
The paper defines intimate partner violence as “physically, sexually, and psychologically harmful behaviours in the context of marriage, cohabitation, or any other form of union, as well as emotional and economic abuse and controlling behaviours”, and notes short-term and long-term physical and mental health effects including injuries, depression, anxiety, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and death.
The study found that violence often started early; a quarter of teen girls aged between 15 and 19 were among those who indicated they had experienced violence from an intimate partner.
Globally, 27% of women aged 15 to 49 said they had experienced intimate partner violence at least once in their lifetime and for one in seven women it had occurred in the year leading up to the study.
In Australasia, 23% of women surveyed said they had gone through IPV in their lifetime, with just 3% indicating that it had happened within the last year.
Neighbouring Oceania reported the highest rate of lifetime IPV in the world, with one in two women having lived through physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner at one point.
One in three women in Oceania said they had experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner in the previous year.
Central sub-Saharan Africa had a slightly higher rate of past-year violence, but a lower lifetime violence estimate of 44%.
There was a sharp divide between rates of IPV between low or middle-income countries and high-income countries.
“These differences between higher-income and lower-income regions were notably more pronounced with past year prevalence than lifetime prevalence, and the relative differences between lifetime and past year prevalence were smaller in low-income and middle-income countries and regions,” World Health Organisation researchers wrote in The Lancet.
The researchers also noted that several countries with substantially higher-than-average instances of past-year intimate partner violence were also affected by conflict.
“These findings are consistent with the different social, economic, and political circumstances that are associated with intimate partner violence and limit women’s ability to leave abusive relationships, such as economic insecurity, gender inequitable norms, high amounts of societal stigma, economic insecurity, discriminatory family law, and inadequate support services,” they said.
All data was collected prior to the pandemic, but the paper highlighted anecdotal evidence that lockdowns had exacerbated domestic violence issues.
With eight years left for governments to meet the United Nations’ sustainable development goal of eliminating violence against women, the researchers said progress has been “grossly insufficient” so far.
“Progress in reducing violence has been slow and countries are not on track to meet the commitments outlined in the sustainable development goals,” they said.
“Robust evidence shows that intimate partner violence is preventable and targeted investments are required to implement multilevel, multisectoral prevention interventions and to strengthen the health and other sectors’ response to intimate partner violence.”
