A new report published by WHO/Europe shows that helplines providing support to women and children experiencing violence saw a spike in calls during the first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The data in the new report, titled “Responding to violence against women and children during COVID-19”, was collected between January and September 2020, a time in which millions of people in the WHO European Region were confined to their homes because of lockdowns or other restrictive measures.
While showing a rise in demand for services provided by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) during COVID-19 lockdowns, the report also finds that 52 of the 53 countries in the Region adopted some form of measure to prevent or respond to the violence.
“The fact that nearly all countries in our Region have recognized and addressed this troubling rise in violence is an important achievement,” said Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe.
“The strength of existing public health systems influenced the choice of strategies in individual countries – strategies such as the expansion of helplines and shelters and the movement of resources to online methods. We should now build on these lessons to strengthen prevention and response moving forward.”
The publication of the report coincides with this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, an annual, activist-led campaign of individuals and organizations around the world, calling for the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls.
Violence against women: a public health issue
Violence against women and children is an important public health, gender equality and human rights issue.
Based on recent estimates by WHO, around 22% of ever-partnered women in the WHO European Region have experienced sexual and/or physical violence by a partner, and approximately 5% of women over the age of 15 years have experienced non-partner sexual violence.
Intimate partner – physical, sexual and psychological – violence causes serious short- and long-term physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health problems for women.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased women’s exposure to violence. With widespread school closures, the enforcement of home-based confinement, the restrictions on movement and disruptions in health and social services, women’s care burdens and at-home stressors have rapidly increased in most countries of the Region.
In Spain, for example, calls to the intimate-partner-violence helpline increased by 47% in the first 2 weeks of April 2020 compared with this period in 2019. In France, the media reported an 89% increase in calls to the national child danger hotline after 1 month of lockdown compared with a year earlier.
It is not uncommon for violence against women and children to increase during outbreaks of infectious diseases, as shown by Ebola, and COVID-19 has been no exception.
Countries have responded to the spike in violence
The other key finding in the report is that virtually all countries in the European Region adopted some measure to prevent and respond to the violence during the pandemic.
The allocation of additional funding, the adaptation of services to meet new challenges (e.g. online/telephone-based service delivery) and NGO-led measures have been among the most widely adopted over the past 2 years.
To complement these measures, WHO recommends that governments maintain services to respond to violence against women among essential services during the pandemic, make provisions that allow those seeking help to safely leave the home, and expand helpline functions and identify more ways of making services accessible remotely.
