JAKARTA – Violence Against Women (VAW) is a global phenomenon that has received increased attention in recent decades. However, the lack of reliable and comparable data on VAW remains a major obstacle in developing national legislations, policies and programmes to prevent and address it.
The Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, in its capacity as the Chair of the Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN) Committee on Women, the ASEAN Secretariat and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, have organized a four-day meeting on strengthening national capacities to collect statistics on VAW in the region. The workshop brings together representatives of women organizations, statistics offices and the health ministry to increase their understanding on how to measure data on VAW.
The need for data on VAW has been given high priority through several UN initiatives and declarations, including in the UN Secretary General’s UNiTE Campaign to End Violence Against Women. At the regional level, the ASEAN Declaration in 2004 states eliminating VAW as one of the eight goals: “to encourage greater regional and bilateral cooperation in the systematic research, collection, analysis and dissemination of data, including disaggregated by sex, age, and other relevant information, on the extent, nature and consequences of violence against women and girls, and on the impact and effectiveness of policies and programmes for combating violence against women.”
Sri Danti, the ASEAN Committee on Women chairperson, stated: “a major obstacle to prevent and address VAW is the lack of reliable and comparable data.”
“The 2004 ASEAN Declaration underscored the need for reliable statistics in order to assess the prevalence of VAW and monitor changes over time. Such statistics are needed to inform and guide the development of a national legislation, policy and programmes that can prevent VAW and protect survivors,” said UNFPA Representative Jose Ferraris at the opening of the meeting.
Ferraris indicated that without timely and accurate indicators, it is impossible to track progress or provide information that compels policymakers to act toward eliminating VAW. Unfortunately, only a few ASEAN countries have reliable data on this problem.
UNFPA Asia Pacific Regional Office’s Gender Adviser, Riet Groenen, said there is a great interest in collecting data on VAW in the region and that UNFPA is eager to support capacity building of partners. UNFPA has already supported national studies on VAW in three countries in the Pacific, while five more studies are underway – with financial support from the Australian Agency for International Development.
Dr. Henriette Jansen, an expert on VAW data collection, is coordinating these five new studies in the Pacific, and is the main resource person for the workshop.
Around the world, one in every three women experiences violence in their lifetime, such as being beaten, coerced into sex – mostly by her husband or intimate partner. Data also shows that in some cases, women experience physical violence during pregnancy.
In Indonesia, the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) recorded that there were 119,107 cases in 2011. This, however, does not reflect the ground reality as there are many cases that were left unreported due to social stigma and other reasons. Currently, discussions are underway to conduct a study to get a more accurate data on the magnitude of the problem in the country.
For more information, please contact:
Agustina Wayansari, mobile +62 812 106 8341, wayansari@unfpa.org
