“One In Three”

One in three. That stark figure sums up the crisis confronting women throughout the world. Among young girls in classrooms worldwide, learning to read and write, one will suffer violence directed at her simply because she is female. Of three women sitting in a market, selling their crops, one will be attacked, most likely by her intimate partner, and hurt so severely she may no longer be able to provide for her family.

Throughout the world, this violence will be repeated: globally, one in three women will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Violence against women has become as much a pandemic as HIV/AIDS or malaria. But it is still generally downplayed by the public at large and by policy-makers who fail to create and fund programmes to eradicate it.

Actions
There is hope. It rests in the fact that in a relatively short time, women and their advocates have transformed the way gender-based violence is understood. As the Women's Fund at the United Nations, UNIFEM has been both a privileged witness and a close partner in the efforts to raise the visibility of gender-based violence. We have funded women's organizing and strategic programmes to halt violence.

And we have brought the voices of women to the United Nations – to the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1994 and the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995; to the UN General Assembly in 1999 and to the Security Council in 2000. The achievements of all those who have worked in this area are monumental: Violence against women has been recognized as a human rights violation; international and regional agreements call for laws and awareness-raising programmes; and services are available to women that did not exist 15 or even 10 years
ago.

A Paradox
Yet we are also confronted with a paradox... Clearly the efforts so far have brought results; nevertheless, women do not appear to be substantively safer from the ravages of violence than they were when the work began. Why does gender-based violence continue, seemingly unabated? The answer is deceptively simple, but the solution is deeply complex: gender inequality fuels violence against women and the power imbalances it creates are not easily rectified. As long as women in diverse countries do not have access to property and employment and equal wages, to the seats of power and to education, the violence that is perpetuated in their lives is viewed as a private rather than a public issue.

Intricate Web
Gender-based violence is part of an intricate web of violence. The trafficking of women is linked to the trafficking of drugs and arms, and an increase in criminality. Rape and sexual abuse are tied to the devastation caused by HIV/AIDS and the destruction of families. Impunity for violence against women suggests impunity for criminal behaviour and the disintegration of the rule of law. Violence against women is tied also to the brutality of war...

Empower Women
Our work to end violence against women must be a conscious part of our work towards the empowerment of women in general. We cannot change the basic structures of society overnight. But each step in the ongoing effort to eradicate violence puts more pressure on those who condone the violence and allow it to exist. Each step makes it harder to ignore the international agreements to protect and promote women's human rights.

Renewed Commitment
This is the moment for a renewed commitment to build on the achievements of the last decades and find the resources for meaningful action. Without this commitment, much of what has been achieved may be lost. That would be a tragedy for all of us, since, as we have learned, women's security is tied to global security. In the words of the UN Commission on Human Security: "The security of one person, one community, one nation rests on the decisions of many others, sometimes fortuitously, sometimes precariously." In our interconnected world, we are all affected by the decisions of individuals and nations whether close to home or on the other side of the world.

Today..., we are renewing our commitment to fight for the right to a life free from brutal attacks on women's physical and emotional well-being. Step by step, every day of the year, we will continue to work towards our goal: the complete elimination of violence against women. At the end of the day, to eliminate violence against women we desperately need to ensure that women have the voice, influence and resources to assert their priorities for achieving peace and security in an increasingly violent world.

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