Economic Commission for Europe

The December 2017 UNECE Work Session on Gender Statistics ( http://www.unece.org/index.php?id=45133) included seven contributions dealing with statistics on violence against women. Experts from national statistical offices and international organizations exchanged knowledge and ideas about survey methodology, harmonization, garnering political support for conducting specialized surveys, and other topics in the measurement of violence against women.

ECE’s work is undertaken by a Task Force that operates under the framework of the Conference of European Statisticians. The Task Force prepared an assessment of existing surveys and methodology on measuring violence. During 2006-2007, ECE completed the following: a comparative analysis of 25 National Surveys carried out by 17 Member countries10, which highlighted the differences and commonalities of the methodology used to measure violence against women and a common basis from where it would be possible to develop standard methodology was also identified; eight indicators were identified for sexual, physical and intimate partner violence, and harmful practices while other areas were identified for the development of new indicators, such as sexual harassment, killing of women by intimate partners, psychological and economic intimate partner violence.

UNECE, together with the World Bank Institute, published a 15 minute video on gender-based violence and issues in its measurement (www.unece.org/stats/video/violence.htm).

UNECE launched its website on violence against women (www.unece.org/stats/gender/vaw/). The site includes copies of national surveys and publications, an overview of terms and definitions, general resources and reports, statistical data and useful links.

UNECE organizes regional and sub-regional meetings and workshops where experts from national statistical offices, users of statistics and international organizations can discuss the value of surveys on violence against women and can develop guidelines on how to improve them. Through the Conference of European Statisticians Task Force, an inventory of methods used to measure violence against women through population-based surveys was carried out for the region. UNECE has collected countries’ experiences in the implementation of national violence against women surveys with a view of encouraging their implementation under the framework of official statistics.

The UNECE Gender Statistics Database provides sex-disaggregated data on violence and crime indicators.

A Second Expert Group Meeting on Measuring Violence against Women was organised by UNECE in Geneva (18-19 November 2010) to review the results of the testing of a survey module on violence against women developed by UNECE. The aim of the module is to enable countries to collect a minimum set of information to measure the prevalence of physical, sexual and intimate partner violence. Other regional commissions helped with preparations and participated in the meeting.

UNECE participated in the "International Conference on a Joint Approach to Family Violence: legislation, indicators, enforcement" organized by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Government of the Kyrgyz Republic, European Commission, Soros Foundation, UNECE, World Bank Institute (WBI) and the Center for Research of Democratic Processes. UNECE provided a presentation on international initiatives to develop indicators on violence against women.

UNECE conducted a workshop on measuring violence against women for users and producers of statistics in the Kyrgyz Republic. The workshop included participants from the national statistical system, crisis centres and gender machineries.

The November 2017 sub-regional Workshop on Gender Statistics ( http://www.unece.org/index.php?id=43956) included a session on gender statistics for the SDGs, including the indicators on violence against women. The workshop aimed to develop the capacity of experts from national statistics to collect data and produce statistics in line with the requirements of the SDGs and according to internationally-agreed methodology.