II SÉRIE-D — NÚMERO 7

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Africa 45.6%

Americas 36.1%

Eastern Mediterranean 36.4%

Europe 27.2%

South-East Asia 40.2%

Western Pacific 27.9%

High income 32.7%

Infographic: The Guardian (Source: WHO)

12. According to the study, 27.2% of women in Europe will experience physical and/or sexual violence in

their lifetime. With a pattern which is identical in all the regions of the world, intimate partner violence accounts

for the greatest proportion of cases also in Europe, the ratio between domestic violence and non-intimate

partner violence being nearly 5 to 1. Unfortunately, this data does not enable us to fully understand the situation

in Council of Europe member States, because some western European countries are included in the group

which is called “high income”.

Ratio of intimate partner violence to non-intimate partner sexual violence by WHO region

Africa 3.1%

Americas 2.8%

Europe 4.9%

South-East Asia 7.7%

Western Pacific 3.8%

High income 1.8%

Infographic: The Guardian (Source: WHO)

13. However important it is to estimate the phenomenon of violence against women and identify regional

trends, the WHO report does have a weakness: it is based on national and regional data which is not collected

through a harmonised methodology.

14. Indeed, each country has its own more or less developed system of data collection on violence against

women. Often, these systems have serious shortcomings: they do not cover all forms of violence against

women; they cover only incidents which attain a certain threshold of gravity; or provide information that is

already outdated when it is published. In addition, the information is not comparable with data collected in other

countries.

15. The lack of robust and comparable data on violence against women in Europe is a well-known problem,

as recognised by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in its Recommendation Rec(2002)5 on

the protection of women against violence, and reiterated in the context of the monitoring of its implementation.

16. In order to bridge the information gap, in 2009 the European Parliament asked the Fundamental Rights

Agency of the European Union (FRA) to carry out a survey on violence against women. This survey will be

published in March 2014. It will be based on interviews of 40 000 women throughout the 28 European

Union member States, and focus on the extent, frequency and severity of violence against women, and access

to and quality of police, health-care and victim support services.

17. The collection of reliable and comparable data is essential with a view to elaborating evidence-based

policies and legislation. This is also recognised by the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and

Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (CETS No. 210, “Istanbul Convention”), which

sets out the following obligations:

“Article 11 – Data collection and research