Together for Girls, a worldwide collaboration aimed at preventing violence against children and adolescents, has released the results of a comprehensive study that shows how common childhood sexual violence is throughout the world this year.
According to the report, during the past 12 months, 82 million girls and 69 million boys from 193 countries have experienced some form of sexual violence.
Together for Girls has also written a book called Break The Record to quantify and comprehend childhood sexual assault and offer a practical framework to put an end to it.
Some features of the book includes United Nations Children’s Fund’s (Unicef) first global and regional estimates which reveals that one in five girls and one in seven boys will experience some form of sexual violence before their 18th birthday.
The effort is part of a larger Break the Record campaign that has the support of activists and influencers worldwide.
Together for Girls CEO and Brave Movement founder Dr Daniela Ligiero says sexual violence against children (SVAC) is persistent, widespread, and devastating, yet there are proven solutions to prevent it from happening.
“One of the key reasons for its proliferation is the lack of global measurement,” she adds.
“While some governments and organisations place measures on a national and regional level, we have yet to see these measures placed on a global scale.”
“With this effort, measuring the experiences of 1.5 billion young people, we hope to transform people’s understanding of SVAC and spur governments to take action,” she continues.
Break The Record also features the Out of the Shadows Index (OOSI) and findings from Childlight: Global Child Safety Institute at the University of Edinburgh, which reveals that online child sexual exploitation and abuse have impacted more than 300 million children under the age of 18.
According to the Into the Light Index, one in eight children have been subjected to online solicitation globally and one in eight children have experienced taking, sharing, and/or exposure to sexual images and videos in the last 12 months.
This index estimates the prevalence of online sexual abuse and exploitation by combining information from national surveys, research, and practice.
“With this book, we are calling on governments and individuals to take action against sexual violence against children,” Dr Ligiero concludes.
The data for this book was compiled by Together for Girls in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), Georgia State University, China Agricultural University, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and University of Edinburgh.
