The Silent Epidemic of Gender-Based Violence

Millions of women suffer in silence as gender-based violence disrupts lives, economies, and security—why is the world still failing them?

Breaking The Silence

An estimated 736 million women - almost one in three - have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence, or both, at least once in their lifetime. Gender-based violence (GBV) is violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately. It includes acts that inflict physical, mental, or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion, and other deprivations of liberty. Women and girls in all regions are affected by gender-based killings. 

Victims of gender-based violence often do not speak up, even though sometimes they make the headlines, as was the case of the Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who was murdered in September 2024 by her former boyfriend. Rebecca represents a string of women who have been murdered most violently in the past. In 2023, Africa recorded the largest absolute and relative numbers of female intimate. . .