Nearly one in three women worldwide—some 840 million—have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN suggests.
The organisations also condemned the fact that rates of such violence had barely dropped in more than two decades.
The data presented showed changes over time in the estimated global prevalence of physical or sexual intimate partner violence against women aged 15-49 from 2000 to 2023. In 2023, 25.8% of women aged 15-49 (uncertainty interval 23.7% to 28.8%) had experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence at some point in their life, which compared with 30.8% (27.9% to 34.4%) in 2000.
For the first time the report includes national and regional estimates of sexual violence by someone other than a partner. Findings suggest that some 263 million women have experienced non-partner sexual violence since age 15. …
