Lethal violence is enormous. There are nearly half a million (437,000) intentional homicides globally each year¹

Lethal violence is gendered. Globally, 95% of perpetrators of intentional homicide are male. Every year, intimate partners or family members perpetrate nearly 64,000 intentional homicides; two thirds of victims are female. Half the intentional homicides of women are perpetrated by an intimate partner or other family members, compared to 6% of intentional homicides of men².

Violence against women is widespread. Globally, one in three women worldwide will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime; 30% of women who have been in an intimate...

Policies to end violence need statistics that show whether violence is increasing or decreasing. Also important are statistics on variations in the rate and form of violence in different social locations. This is to monitor progress and effectiveness, or otherwise, of policies. Increasingly, policy bodies seeking to end violence have become more explicit in their calls for relevant data, statistics and indicators. These bodies include the UN and its agencies, regional governance entities and states. Drawing on their legally defined mandates, they have been articulating their principles within policies designed to end violence, or at least specific forms of violence....

Producing a coherent and consistent measurement framework requires a coherent and consistent conceptualisation of violence and gender. This conceptual framework is anchored in the principles embedded in international legal instruments and developed through reviews of research.

Because international legal instruments mobilise general concepts and principles, this approach is not the same as identifying violence with specific national criminal codes. The definition of violence depends on the location of the boundary between violence and notviolence. This depends on the understanding of the nature of the act (and intention) and the harm (and non-consent), although not all approaches have considered all these...

There are different forms of violence against women and men. These differences in forms potentially have implications for their measurement. This chapter addresses the nuances required for the measurement framework to take these differences into account, although it is important not to overstate the differences.

The typology of forms of violence proposed here is based in international legal instruments, as discussed in Chapter Two. These include the UNDeclaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women(DEVAW)¹³⁶and the UNConvention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women(CEDAW)^137.There is attention to the regional Conventions on gender-based violence, including...

Where can relevant data be found and collected? There are two main sources: administrative and survey. Data on violence against women and men is collected during administrative processes by public services, as well as by deliberate endeavour through social surveys conducted for academic researchers and governments. It is a challenge to ensure the use of a common set of definitions and units of measurement that facilitates cooperation among relevant entities and overcomes the current fragmentation and incompatibility between data collectors, while not neglecting the requirements of particular services.

Since the data is collected for a wide variety of purposes, it...

Coordination is needed to ensure the development of the coherent measurement framework for violence against women and men, including indicators and the collection of consistent quality data. Coordination includes:

Institutions: to coordinate between countries and international organisations; to monitor, reflect and improve processes, to broker the compromises between agencies that are needed to move towards a single measurement framework and to ensure implementation.

Indicators: to summarise complicated statistics into easy-to-understand figures that benchmark progress.

Data collection: to provide administrative and survey data that reaches recognised quality standards.

Data processing: to process raw data into statistics and agreed indicators.

Data linkage:...

The purpose of the collection of administrative and survey data and research is to build the knowledge base necessary to combat violence against women and men.

This knowledge base is more effective if benchmarks and summary indicators of changes in violence are sufficiently consistent and coherent to support each other. The use of the same categories to measure the extent and severity of violence in both surveys and the various administrative sources is beneficial for this aim of coherence and complementarity. This is of importance both within a given country and between countries.

The goal should be a single coherent...