Number of ever-married girls and women aged 15-49 years who experienced physical and/or sexual violence by a current or former husband or partner in the past 12 months

Number of ever-married girls and women aged 15-49 years

Intimate partner violence includes any physical, sexual or emotional abuse perpetrated by a current or former partner within the context of marriage, cohabitation or any other formal or informal union.

Although both girls and boys can be victims of intimate partner violence, girls are at greater risk. Given prevailing social norms that sanction male dominance over women, violence between intimate partners is often perceived as an ordinary or normal element of relationships, particularly in the context of marriage or other unions. In fact, violence directed at girls and women by an intimate partner is the most common form of gender-based violence.

The conceptual definitions of the types of violence covered in the SDG indicator, as defined in the 2014 UN Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women, are:

‘Physical violence’ consists of acts aimed at physically hurting the victim and include, but are not limited to acts like pushing, grabbing, twisting the arm, pulling hair, slapping, kicking, biting or hitting with a fist or object, trying to strangle or suffocate, burning or scalding on purpose, or threatening or attacking with some sort of weapon, gun or knife.

‘Sexual violence’ is defined as any sort of harmful or unwanted sexual behaviour that is imposed on someone, whether by use of force, intimidation or coercion. It includes acts of abusive sexual contact, forced engagement in sexual acts, attempted or completed sexual acts without consent, non-contact acts such as being forced to watch or participate in pornography, etc. In intimate partner relationships, sexual violence is commonly defined as: being physically forced to have sexual intercourse, having sexual intercourse out of fear for what the partner might do or through coercion, and/or being forced to do something sexual that the woman considers humiliating or degrading.

‘Psychological violence’ includes a range of behaviours that encompass acts of emotional abuse and controlling conduct.

It is important to note that because of the stigma surrounding intimate partner violence, available data are likely to underestimate the true prevalence.

The availability of comparable data remains a challenge as many data collection efforts have relied on varying survey methodologies, not used the same definitions of partner or spousal violence and of the forms of violence, utilized different survey questions, and sampled diverse age groups. The quality of interviewer training is also highly variable. Because of this, data should be interpreted with caution.

Currently, national data included in the global SDG database are disaggregated only by age (when possible) but not by type of violence, as called for in the indicator definition. This is because, while there is global consensus on how physical and sexual intimate partner violence are generally defined and measured, psychological partner violence is conceptualized differently across cultures and in different contexts.

In addition, the indicator definition makes reference to experiences of intimate partner violence by ever-partnered women aged 15 years and older. However, a majority of the available data have only been collected for a subset of girls and women aged 15 to 49 years, and there is a general lack of consistency in the age range of sample populations across other available sources. Therefore, global reporting on this indicator at this moment only reflects violence experienced by ever-partnered girls and women aged 15 to 49 years.

Numerator: Number of ever-partnered women and girls (aged 15 years and above) who have experienced physical, sexual and/or psychological violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months.

Denominator: Number of ever-partnered women and girls (aged 15 years and above) in the population.

In addition to form of violence and age, income/wealth, education, ethnicity (including indigenous status), disability status, marital/partnership status, relationship with the perpetrator (i.e. current/former partner), geographic location and frequency of violence are suggested as desired variables for disaggregation for this indicator. Though disaggregated data by these variables is not yet feasible to report on at regional and global levels, countries are encouraged to report these levels of disaggregation in their national reports; and—whenever possible—include these data for the age group 15 to 49.

When data for a country are entirely missing, no country-level estimate is published.

No imputations are made in cases where country data are not available. Where regional and global figures are presented, clear notes on data limitations are provided. The number of countries included in the average is clearly indicated.

Global aggregates are weighted averages of all the countries that make up the world. Regional aggregates are weighted averages of all the countries within the region. Weights used are the population of women and girls aged 15 to 49 from the most recent UN population prospects. Where data are not available for all countries in any given region, regional aggregates may still be calculated. The number of countries included in the average is clearly indicated. It should be noted that regional and global figures should be interpreted with caution, as they do not necessarily represent with accuracy the region or world as a whole, especially for regions where population coverage is below 50 per cent. Custodian agencies, in consultation with Member States, are currently in the process of producing up-to- date global, regional and country estimates, enhancing the quality and accuracy of 5.2.1 reporting and addressing the comparability challenges outlined above. New regional and global estimates are expected to become available in mid-2020.

In most cases, only figures published by countries are used. However, in a small number of countries data may be recalculated to enhance comparability. Recalculation is done primarily to reflect the 15 to 49 preponderant age group, or to reflect the aggregate of physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, for countries where this information is gathered but not published as such. Calculations are done using survey datasets made public by countries or using raw data available in published survey reports.

Countries gather data on intimate partner violence through (1) specialized national prevalence surveys dedicated to measuring violence against women, (2) violence against women modules that are added to international/national household surveys, such as the DHS; and (3) victimization surveys Although administrative data from health, police, courts, justice and social services, among other services used by survivors of violence, can provide information on violence against women and girls, these do not provide prevalence data, but rather incidence data or service use (i.e., number of cases received in/reported to these services). Many abused women do not report violence and those who do, tend to be the most serious cases. Therefore, administrative data are not recommended to be used as a data source for this indicator. For more information on recommended practices in production of violence against women statistics see: UN Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women- Statistical Surveys (UN, 2014).

The Interagency Working Group on Violence against Women Data, which comprises all custodian agencies for this SDG indicator, thoroughly reviews all country data, including its primary source when deemed necessary, to assess quality and comparability based on exclusion/inclusion criteria agreed upon a priori. These criteria refer to, inter-alia, survey population coverage, operational definitions, methodology, and time period. All data points have been discussed and a consensual decision made for every data point included/excluded from the current SDG Indicators Database. Starting in 2020, a country consultation and validation process of data compiled by custodian agencies for this indicator will be undertaken, including with identified SDG indicators focal points and other relevant ministries.

Since 2015, 139 countries had conducted violence against women national prevalence surveys or have included a module on violence against women in a DHS or other national household survey. However, not all these data are comparable and in many cases they are not collected on a regular basis.

Time series are available for some countries. Global time series with comparable data not yet available.

The SDG 5.2.1 Indicator Database comprises namely data from population-based household surveys implementing an internationally standardised methodology. A significant proportion of data are gathered through the inclusion of a Domestic Violence Module in the DHS. In addition, some data come from dedicated surveys on violence against women in countries that have implemented, for example, WHO’s violence against women survey methodology. Where available, other dedicated surveys are included if the data are deemed comparable. All sources date from 2005 onwards.

Data are collated by the Inter-Agency Working Group on Violence against Women Data from data published by National Statistics Offices or other relevant national entities. For efficiency, some data are collated using existing data compiling online platforms (e.g., DHS StatCompiler). For a few countries, data are recalculated for harmonization regarding age group (15 to 49) and type of intimate partner violence (any form of physical and/or sexual partner violence).

NA

NA

National Statistical Offices (in most cases) or line ministries/other government agencies that have conducted national surveys on violence against women and girls.

URL: http://evaw-global-database.unwomen.org/en data.unicef.org http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/default.html References: 1.United Nations, 2014. Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women- Statistical Surveys. 2.United Nations, 2015. The World’s Women 2015, Trends and Statistics. 3.World Health Organization, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, South African Medical Research Council, 2013. Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. 4.UN Women. 2016. Global Database on Violence against Women. Available at: http://evaw-global-database.unwomen.org/en 5.UNICEF Data portal: http://data.unicef.org/child-protection/violence.html 6.UNSD Portal on the minimum set of gender indicators: http://genderstats.un.org/beta/index.html#/home 7.UNSD dedicated portal for data and metadata on violence against women: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/vaw/ Related indicators 5.2.2: Proportion of women and girls aged 15 years and older subjected to sexual violence by persons other than an intimate partner in the previous 12 months, by age and place of occurrence 11.7.2: Proportion of persons victim of physical or sexual harassment, by sex, age, disability status and pace of occurrence, in the previous 12 months 16.1.3: Proportion of population subjected to physical, psychological or sexual violence in the previous 12 months 16.2.3: Proportion of young women and men aged 18-29 years who experienced sexual violence by age 18

Intimate partner violence includes any physical, sexual or emotional abuse perpetrated by a current or former partner within the context of marriage, cohabitation or any other formal or informal union.

Although both girls and boys can be victims of intimate partner violence, girls are at greater risk. Given prevailing social norms that sanction male dominance over women, violence between intimate partners is often perceived as an ordinary or normal element of relationships, particularly in the context of marriage or other unions. In fact, violence directed at girls and women by an intimate partner is the most common form of gender-based violence.

A proxy indicator that refers only to experiences of physical and/or sexual violence is used for SDG reporting on indicator 5.2.1, because there is no agreed-upon definition or standard methodology for measuring psychological violence.

For indicators 5.2.1, 5.2.2 and 16.2.3, elimination is defined as 0.1 per cent prevalence or less.

For indicators 5.2.1 and 5.2.2, trends are assessed by comparing two data points from comparable survey sources. If the calculated average annual rate of change (AARC) was sufficient to reach elimination by 2030, the country is considered on track.

For indicator 16.2.3, trends in the prevalence of sexual violence in childhood are assessed by comparing the values across two age cohorts (aged 18–19 and 25–29) from the most recent available data source. The AARC was calculated over a 7-year period. The country is considered on track if the observed AARC is sufficient to reach elimination by 2030. An additional criterion for a country to be considered on track was a prevalence of 0 per cent for sexual violence ever experienced among those aged 15–17.

Due to very low levels reported for indicators 5.2.2 and 16.2.3 in most countries, the ‘on track’ analyses that are presented here need to be interpreted with some degree of caution, as the observed changes used to determine a country’s progress may be within confidence intervals.

Note that for the 2020 SDG reporting period, the co-custodian agencies for indicators 5.2.1 and 5.2.2 did not submit any data updates since work is ongoing to consult and validate new estimates for 5.2.1 and to agree on an indicator definition for 5.2.2.