UNICEF: 15 million girls become victims of sexual abuse

Fifteen million girls from 15 to 19 suffer from sexual abuse against their will every year. Ten million girls in the world are victims of sexual violence, stated UNICEF’s Global Chief of Child Protection Cornelius Williams.

These data is presented in the new report “ A Familiar Face: Violence in the lives of children and adolescents”  of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), published on 1 November 2017.  The report is the result of a study in 28 countries. However, nine out of ten sexually abused girls became victims of acts of friends or people close to them.

A Familiar Face: Violence in the lives of children and adolescents uses the most current data to shed light on four specific forms of violence: violent discipline and exposure to domestic abuse during early childhood; violence at school; violent deaths among adolescents; and sexual violence in childhood and adolescence.

The statistics reveal that children experience violence across all stages of childhood, in diverse settings, and often at the hands of the trusted individuals with whom they interact on a daily basis.  Ensuring that violence in all its forms is recognized as a fundamental violation of children’s human rights and documented through solid data is a first step towards its elimination.

KEY FACTS:

Close to 300 million (3 in 4) children aged 2 to 4 worldwide experience violent discipline by their caregivers on a regular basis; 250 million (around 6 in 10) are punished by physical means.

Worldwide, 1 in 4 (176 million) children under age 5 live with a mother is a victim of intimate partner violence.

Worldwide, close to 130 million (slightly more than 1 in 3) students between the ages of 13 and 15 experience bullying.

732 million (1 in 2) school-age children between 6 and 17 years live in countries where corporal punishment at school is not fully prohibited.

Every 7 minutes, somewhere in the world, an adolescent is killed by an act of violence. In 2015 alone, violence took the lives of around 82,000 adolescents worldwide.

In the United States, the homicide rate among non-Hispanic Black adolescent boys aged 10 to 19 is almost 19 times higher than the rate among non-Hispanic White adolescent boys.

Worldwide, around 15 million adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 have experienced forced sex in their lifetime.

Based on data from 30 countries, only 1% of adolescent girls who have experienced forced sex reached out for professional help.