As we approach the end of the year, many of us will soon be surrounded by our family and friends sitting around the table as we celebrate the festive season. Look around the table and reflect on the fact that, on average, one in three women you see will have experienced sexual or physical abuse at some point in her life.
This violence is not a remote act that happens in other people’s homes, it lives everywhere as an uninvited guest at the table. He thrives on secrecy, infiltrating homes, communities, and workplaces. However, we are nowhere near an adequate global response that addresses the scale of this problem. If we are serious about tackling this problem, we cannot continue down the same path. Doing so will rob ourselves and women around the world of the future and life they deserve.
Violence against women and girls is not only one of the most widespread human rights violations, but also has significant economic costs. And this is proven: the global economy loses $1.5 trillion each year due to the consequences of violence against women, ranging from money spent on hospitals or law enforcement to lost income when victims miss work. .
Experience shows us that these alarming figures tend to increase during crises. We recently witnessed an increase of up to 300% in domestic violence during the Covid-19 pandemic. Encouragingly, many governments and organizations took strong action to stem the rising tide of violence. But as the pandemic recedes, attention to ending the violence fades with it. We are sleepwalking back into our old ways and failed practices, which the pandemic has shown to be ineffective and expose far too many women to violence from men.
We know that violence can be prevented. Studies show that investing in preventative solutions yields multiple benefits, yet the ongoing economic cost of violence shows that most of our resources go into intervening after abuse has occurred rather than preventing it from occurring in the first place. This is a much more expensive approach, particularly at a time when global growth is slowing sharply, increasing poverty and hurting public spending on social services. If we go back to business as usual, the cascading effects will expose more women to violence, while reduced income will hamper the ability of social services to adequately support victims.
As we look at the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign, we have an opportunity to commit to fundamental change, one that puts violence prevention, and the inequalities that enable it, at the center of our collective efforts. Doing so is both a moral imperative and smart economics. Countries could use the resources saved through prevention to invest in achieving greater gender equality and taking a bold step towards meeting their commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals.
In the Commonwealth, we are working with our 56 member countries to accelerate efforts to address violence against women and girls with a focus on prevention. In particular, we developed a pioneering tool that makes a strong economic case for tackling violence by measuring how much a country loses when it fails to act to prevent it. The tool helps countries measure the full scope of the problem, analyze the data, and provide cost-effective solutions to improve the overall response to end the violence.
Recently our work in Seychelles revealed for the first time that the country loses 4.6% of its GDP due to violence against women and girls. In addition, she outlined system-wide responses to address violence, including through policies to protect victims, enhance women’s financial independence, and promote bias-free frontline services. Since then, we have been supporting Seychelles in implementing multi-agency measures, including a new domestic violence law, designed to prevent and respond to violence.
While violence itself is reason enough to act, knowing the economic cost that accompanies it offers a powerful argument for galvanizing governments, businesses and individuals to take further action. It shows that when an act of violence occurs, we all lose, and emphasizes that ending it is in everyone’s interest. We urge countries to consider measuring the economic cost of violence as an annual exercise to assess the effectiveness of their action and take advantage of the findings to strengthen their response towards the elimination of this violation.
We must also remember that this is the violence of men, and we must involve them in prevention and intervention efforts as active allies. In this sense, we are complementing our political response with a constant defense. Equipped with a variety of easy-to-use advocacy resources, our Commonwealth Says No More campaign takes a culturally sensitive, bottom-up approach to engage individuals, communities and businesses in raising awareness against gender-based violence, involving grassroots leaders to counter damaging social norms and empower bystanders to intervene effectively.
Therefore, any intervention will be in vain if it is not backed by determined action by all, starting with making our homes, our communities, our workplaces and our countries safe. Now is not the time to drop this topic. Now, more than ever, is the time for a smart and targeted global response to violence against women and girls that puts out the fires of violence and sows the seeds of lasting peace for all. And if not now, when?
Patricia Scotland KC is the Secretary General of the Commonwealth.
