Economic Commission for Europe
Background
As a multilateral platform, UNECE promotes sustainable development and economic prosperity through the facilitation of economic integration and cooperation among its 56 member countries in Europe, North America and Asia. The UNECE Statistical Division implements the work programme of the Conference of European Statisticians (CES), which is the main body dealing with the coordination of official statistics in the region.
Policy framework
The work of the CES on violence against women is guided by the statistical needs of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. All statistical work of the CES is conducted within the Framework of the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics.
Areas of Focus
UNECE’s statistical work on violence against women relates to the improvement of the availability and quality of data. Recognizing the limitations of measuring gender-based violence through administrative data, UNECE focuses its efforts on improving the measurement of violence against women through population-based surveys.
Within the CES’ work programme on gender statistics, UNECE organizes Work Sessions on Gender Statistics every 1.5 years, which include sessions dealing with the statistical measurement of violence against women. These provide a platform for the exchange of experience, knowledge and good practice in the statistical measurement of violence against women, and the identification of gaps and challenges.
Resources
Developing Gender Statistics: A Practical Tool (UNECE/World Bank Institute (2010). A reference manual prepared by the UNECE Task Force on gender statistics training for statisticians with contributions from various experts. The manual has a section on collection of data on gender-based violence: www.unece.org/index.php?id=17450
The UNECE Gender Statistics Database provides sex-disaggregated data on violence and crime indicators. www.unece.org/data
Papers about statistics on violence against women that have been presented at UNECE Work Sessions on Gender Statistics are available from www.unece.org/statistics/meetings-and-events.html#/0/0/0/17715
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.
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.