Published 1 September 2020

On 5 April 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted a “horrifying global surge in domestic violence” since Governments around the world had begun imposing lockdowns, quarantines and movement restrictions in order to control the spread of COVID-19. In his remarks, the Secretary General noted that in some countries calls to gender-based violence (GBV) support services had doubled. [1] Similarly, a plethora of reports from around the world have signaled an increase in reported cases of gender-based violence – particularly intimate partner violence – since the beginning of the pandemic. However, in some places, the service provision statistics actually show the opposite – that fewer GBV survivors are reaching out for support from service providers as compared to the levels seen prior to COVID-19. [2] This discrepancy is a classic example of why – in every humanitarian emergency - experts advise against relying too heavily on the number of reported cases when making programmatic and policy decisions about GBV.

In the context of COVID-19, as in other emergencies, the number of cases documented by service providers can never capture the overall scale or severity of the violence women and girls are facing. Similarly, variations in the number of survivors who connect with response services – whether an increase or decrease in help-seeking – can occur for multiple reasons, many of which have nothing to do with the actual rates of violence taking place. Therefore, taking action to address GBV must be a priority regardless of whether or not increases in reports have been formally documented and, most critically, GBV incident data must never be treated as a prerequisite for taking action. [2] In order to make effective policy and programming decisions, governments, policymakers and donors must go beyond the numbers and aim for a more comprehensive understanding of dynamics driving pre-existing violence against women and girls and how the current environment exacerbates these risks. The following article illustrates some of the limitations of the statistics that have been widely publicized in the context of the pandemic, provides additional contextual information to better understand the risks women and girls are facing, and outlines some priority recommendations for addressing gender-based violence in the context of COVID-19. (From the introduction). Record #6817