Violence against girls and women

"Violence against women and girls, many of whom are brutalised from cradle to grave simply because of their gender, is the most pervasive human rights violation in the world today.

"Long after slavery was abolished in most of the world, many societies still treat women like chattel: Their shackles are poor education, economic dependence, limited political power, limited access to fertility control, harsh social conventions and inequality in the eyes of law. Violence is a key instrument used to keep these shackles on.

"Stopping violence against women and girls is not just a matter of punishing individual acts. The issue is changing the perception - so deep-seated it is often unconscious - that women are fundamentally of less value than men. It is only when women and girls gain their place as strong and equal members of society that violence against them will be viewed as a shocking aberration rather than an invisible norm."

-Charlotte Bunch, Executive Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership, in UNICEF 1997 Progress of Nations

photo by Mir Ahmed Miru/Unicef

Violence against Girls and Adolescents

Trafficking and Sexual Abuse

• Over the past decade, more than 500,000 Bangladeshi women and children have been trafficked - smuggled into prostitution or forced labour across country borders. Women are abducted and lured by traffickers through threats, physical force, illegal confinement and debt bondage.

• Half of 150 people interviewed in Bangladesh admit experiencing some form of child sexual abuse.
• 16.26 per cent of rape victims are minors

Child marriage

• 50 per cent of girls aged 15-19 in Bangladesh are currently or have been married.

• Many girls have their first child while they are still teenagers. Over 10 per cent of girls currently 15 have begun childbearing in Bangladesh, the highest known percentage in South Asia. These young mothers face the stresses and risks of childbirth before their bodies have matured, and have a high incidence of maternal mortality.

• The risk of maternal mortality is three times as high for 15-19 year olds in Bangladesh as compared to even slightly older married women, ages 20-14.

Acid Attacks

• Women are disfigured and sometimes killed by male attacks using sulfuric acid, a cheap and accessible weapon. Reasons are as varied as family feuds, inability to meet dowry demands, and rejection of marriage proposals.
• There were over 200 reports of acid mutilations in Bangladesh in 1998 alone. UNICEF believes the actual number of cases is much higher.

Violence against women

Physical abuse and domestic violence

• Bangladesh's maternal mortality rate - at 440 deaths per 100,000 live births - is a leading cause of death. Yet, more women die from burns, suicide and injury than from pregnancy and childbirth.
• More than 70 per cent of women in some regions of Bangladesh suffer from domestic abuse.

• In 750 cases of family violence in Bangladesh, male relatives account for all but 29 cases of violence.

• Nearly 50 per cent of all murders of females in Bangladesh can be attributed to domestic violence.

Dowry violence and deaths

• There were 239 reports of dowry-related violence in 1998, an increase of 25 per cent from the year before. Because of the vast number of unreported incidents, this number is significantly higher.
• Physical and verbal abuse of wives due to non-fulfillment of dowry occurs in at least 50 per cent of recent marriages."

Psychological abuse

• The United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women cites psychological harm as a major form of violence against women.
• Women suffer from belittlement, threats, taunting and confinement. This can lead to depression and even suicide.

Violence in motherhood

• Bangladeshi women 15-19 who are pregnant or have recently given birth are nearly three times more likely to die from violence than women of the same age who are not pregnant.
• Battered pregnant women are twice as likely to miscarry and four times as likely to have a low-birthweight baby.
• Children born to battered women are 40 times more likely to die in the first five years of life than children whose mothers are not battered.

Mistreatment in widowhood

• Widows in Bangladesh may be mistreated and secluded.

A 1992 study of widows from four squatter sites in Dhaka found that 70 per cent of younger widows are victims of sexual attacks.