WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

Violence Against Women - The Missing MDG - Importance for Post-2015 Agenda

 

Direct Link to Full 21-Page 2013 Publication:

Violence Against Women – the missing MDG? (en) 

Introduction

Violence against women (VAW) is an international problem - it persists in different forms in all countries and societies of the world. It is currently estimated that over one third of all women worldwide have been subjected to physical or sexual violence (WHO 2013).

After the evolution of a number of human rights standards building a strong international framework on the issue in the last decades, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) of the United Nations only recently in its annual meeting 2013 adopted agreed conclusions on the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. However, despite the increasing recognition of the problem accompanied by a number of human rights standards, there is still a glaring lack of data on the issue, as well as great lack of resources and political will devoted to combat this epidemic (Bunch 2008). The MDGs, as the first global target-bound framework to combat poverty and inequality, have also often been criticized for their lack of integration of this crucial issue for gender equality1. VAW has been glaringly absent from the MDGs, despite evidence that it is affecting and undoing progress in each area the MDGs focus on (Moosa 2013). Many players therefore now advocate that vio-lence against women - often termed ‘the missing MDG’ - be integrated into the post-2015 agenda (among them is also Switzerland in its Swiss Position on Gender Equality in the post-2015 Agenda).

Violence against women is not only an important issue for the post-2015 agenda, it is also a problem that is often encountered by development practitioners in the field, as can be seen by the rich and varied feedback our E-discussion with SDC Gender Focal Points generated. It was interesting to note that despite the fact that only few cooperation offices have projects that directly deal with violence against women, it is nevertheless an issue people frequently encounter in their work......