One in eight women worldwide have experienced sexual assault before the age of 18, reports UNICEF

More than 370 million girls and women around the world have been victims of rape or sexual assault during their childhood or adolescence, UNICEF denounced in an international report on this violence of a “alarming scale”. The United Nations Children’s Fund states that “more than 370 million girls and women alive today – or one in eight – have experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18”according to a press release summarizing its work unveiled during the night from Wednesday to Thursday. “If we include “non-contact” forms of sexual violence, such as online verbal abuse, the number of girls and women affected rises to 650 million worldwide, or one in five”UNICEF is alarmed.

For its director, Catherine Russell, “Sexual violence against children is an unbearable attack on our collective conscience”. These attacks and rapes “cause deep and lasting trauma, and are often inflicted by a trusted person, in environments where the child should feel safe”denounces the UN official cited in the press release.

Ces “first-ever global and regional estimates of sexual violence against children” are unveiled on the eve of October 11, International Day of the Girl. Unicef ​​is moved by “the alarming scale” of this violence “on a global scale”especially against adolescent girls.

68 million victims in Europe and North America

This sexual violence knows no geographic, cultural or economic boundaries. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of victims (79 million girls and young women affected, or 22% of its population), ahead of East and Southeast Asia (75 million, 8%). . This is followed by 73 million victims in Central and South Asia (9% of the population), 68 million in Europe and North America (14%), 45 million in Latin America and the Caribbean (18%), 29 million in North Africa and the Middle East (15%) and 6 million in Oceania (34%).

Wars as well as economic and social crises encourage attacks against girls, M^me Russell noting “atrocious sexual violence in conflict zones, where rape and gender-based violence are often used as weapons of war”.