Addressing violence against women and achieving the Millennium Development Goals
Conclusion
As governments and communities mobilize around the MDGs, they should be aware that violence against women not only arises from the conditions being addressed by the Goals, but also hinders their achievement. This underlines the importance of advocacy efforts aimed at connecting development and health with violence against women in the minds of those who make policies and design development programmes.
The MDGs are about creating more dignified living conditions for all, but approaches to development that ignore gender dimensions risk leaving existing inequalities unchanged or only slightly improved for half the world’s population. It is imperative that politicians, decision-makers and all other relevant actors remember that women and men live different lives, and that women's lives often include violence for no other reason than that they are women.
In order for the targets and Goals to be reached, comprehensive approaches that acknowledge the links between gender inequality and violence against women must be developed and implemented (1). These approaches and actors will require some additional resources and it is essential that governments, donors and multilateral agencies ensure that these resources are available. Building concrete responses to violence against women into MDG strategies will help to ensure that the new millennium is the time when women no longer endure violence solely because they are women. In addition to working towards Goal 3 on gender equality and women’s empowerment, issues of violence against women should be addressed across all Goals. Increased attention must be paid to addressing the risk factors for violent behaviour of men towards women as well as the risk factors for violence shared by men and women. Unless prevention and awareness of violence against women is integrated into all MDGs, sustainable development will continue to suffer – and the ambitious Goals agreed to by the international community will remain unattainable.
Action-oriented research
While the past two or three decades produced many lessons about violence against women, more research and data are needed to better:
- understand its root causes, magnitude and consequences,
- identify solutions, and
- galvanize social, legal and political change (40).
In response to important gaps in available data, WHO initiated a Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence Against Women, which was carried out in 10 countries representing different continents, cultures and stages of development. The Study was designed to obtain reliable estimates of the prevalence of violence against women in different countries, using consistent and standardized methodologies to facilitate comparisons between countries. It documents links between intimate-partner violence and health outcomes, and risk and protective factors in different settings, as well as coping strategies. The Study will provide a valuable resource for the design of policies and programmes aimed at reducing violence against women.