Eva Michálková
6/1/2020
Combating Violence Against Women: Beyond the Coronavirus
Read an article by Alexandria Wilson McDonald where she examines the situation of the increase in domestic violence due to the coronavirus pandemic in the Czech Republic and explains why it is essential that domestic violence is seen in the wider context of gender violence.
For: Brno Daily
By: Alexandria Wilson-McDonald
Brno, May 31 (BD) – Over the past two and a half months officials around the world have told people that the safest place for them to be is at home. Paradoxically, for many women, home is the most dangerous place. A 2019 study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that in the previous year 50,000 women worldwide were killed by intimate partners or family members – that equates to 137 women murdered every day by a member of their own family.
While murder is the extreme of violence, women face myriad of abuses within the home, including physical, psychological, reproductive, economic, and sexual abuse by intimate partners and family members. A 2019 OSCE-led survey on violence against women showed that nearly one in five women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15. These conditions are exacerbated under quarantine and travel restrictions put in place in countries around the world in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated in April, “for many women and girls, the threat looms largest where they should be safest: in their own homes.”