Not until the half of our population represented by women and girls can live free from fear, violence and everyday insecurity, can we truly say we live in a fair and equal world.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

The UN System’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence activities, from 25 November (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) to 10 December (Human Rights Day), will take place under our 2020 global theme: "Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!"

UN statistics

• 1 in 3 women and girls experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, most frequently by an intimate partner.
• Only 52% of women married or in a union freely make their own decisions about sexual relations, contraceptive use and health care
• Worldwide, almost 750 million women and girls alive today were married before their 18th birthday; while 200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM)
• 1 in 2 women killed worldwide were killed by their partners or family in 2012; while only 1 out of 20 men were killed under similar circumstances
• 71% of all human trafficking victims worldwide are women and girls, and 3 out of 4 of these women and girls are sexually exploited
• Violence against women is as serious a cause of death and incapacity among women of reproductive age as cancer, and a greater cause of ill health than traffic accidents and malaria combined.

The UN are working to end Violence Against Women worldwide, in the following areas:

• intimate partner violence (domestic violence, psychological abuse, marital rape, femicide);
• sexual violence and harassment (rape, forced sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, street harassment, stalking, tech abuse, cyber-harassment);
• human trafficking (slavery, sexual exploitation);
• female genital mutilation; and
• child marriage.