Adolescent Girls Pix: UNICEF
Nearly 19 million adolescent girls experience physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence by the time they turn 20 years old.
This was disclosed in a new analysis from the World Health Organization (WHO) published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.
According to the analysis, almost 1 in 6 (16%) experienced such violence in the past year.
Director of WHO’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research Department, Pascale Allotey, noted that intimate partner violence is starting alarmingly early for millions of young women who are between ages 15 to 19.
“Given that violence during these critical formative years can cause profound and lasting harms, it needs to be taken more seriously as a public health issue – with a focus on prevention and targeted support,” Allotey said.
While violence against adolescent girls occurs everywhere, the authors highlight significant differences in prevalence.
Based on WHO’s estimates, the worst affected regions are Oceania (47%) and central sub-Saharan Africa (40%), for instance, while the lowest rates are in central Europe (10%) and central Asia (11%). Between countries, there is also a substantive range: from an estimated 6% of adolescent girls subjected to such violence in the least affected countries, to 49% in those with the highest rates.
WHO noted that partner violence can have devastating impacts on young people’s health, educational achievement, future relationships, and lifelong prospects.
“From a health perspective, it heightens the likelihood of injuries, depression, anxiety disorders, unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, and many other physical and psychological conditions.
“High rates of violence against adolescent girls reflect deeply entrenched inequalities,” it said.
The new analysis found that intimate partner violence against adolescent girls is most common in lower-income countries and regions, in places where there are fewer girls in secondary school, and where girls have weaker legal property ownership and inheritance rights compared to men.
The study highlighted the urgent need to strengthen support services and early prevention measures tailored for adolescents, alongside actions to advance women’s and girls’ agency and rights.
The study author, Dr Lynnmarie Sardinha who is also Technical Officer for Violence Against Women Data and Measurement at WHO, stated that to end gender-based violence, countries need to have policies and programmes in place that increase equality for women and girls.
“This means ensuring secondary education for all girls, securing gender-equal property rights and ending harmful practices such as child marriage, which are often underpinned by the same inequitable gender norms that perpetuate violence against women and girls,” Sardinha said.
This study was funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office through the WHO-UN Women Joint Programme on Strengthening Violence Against Women Data, and the United Nations’ Special Programme of Research, Development, and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP).