Africa/Global: Women, violence and health

This report discusses violence against women and girls as a major human rights scandal and a public health crisis. The authors contend that globally women are regularly beaten and sexually abused by intimate partners, family members, neighbours, and by people not known to them. They also suffer gender-based violence during and after conflicts and wars. The impact on women's health goes far beyond bruises, broken bones or even death. As well as causing physical suffering to women, such violence has a profound impact on women's psychological well-being, on their sexual and reproductive health and on the well-being and security of their families and communities. The cost in human terms is huge and also has an economic dimension.