Published February 2020

The need for data on violence against women (VAW), including from administrative sources, is currently high on the global agenda. Yet, despite the potential importance of such administrative data for improving policy and programmes, benefiting survivors and ensuring accountability of perpetrators, synthesis of good practices and guidance for their collection from and use by different sectors is generally lacking.

The objective of this background paper is to synthesize evidence, including divergent expert opinions, on the collection and use of VAW administrative data. It was
used as the technical document for an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) convened in September 2019 by UN Women. The background paper and the discussions
and recommendations coming out of the EGM will inform the development of global guidance on the collection and use of VAW administrative data. The anticipated audiences for the guidance are national and sub-national policymakers as well as managers responsible for providing services to survivors of VAW and interacting with perpetrators.

This effort contributes to the five-year (2018-2022) Global Joint Programme on Strengthening Methodologies and Measurement and Building National Capacities for Violence against Women Data with UN Women and the World Health Organization (WHO) as participating UN organizations and other UN agencies such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as technical partners.

The objectives proposed for the eventual global guidance are: •To increase understanding of what VAW administrative data are, what they can tell us and,
critically, what they cannot tell us (data literacy); To propose a small number of variables to be collected across service delivery sectors; To make recommendations to establish or improve national and sub-national initiatives to safely and ethically collect and use these data. (From the Executive summary). Record #6689