The prevalence of sexual violence underlines the need to protect girls

According to new data from UNICEF, one in four girls is raped or sexually abused in fragile environments.

More than 370 million girls and women alive today – or 1 in 8 – have been raped or sexually abused before the age of 18, according to new data from UNICEF.

“The numbers are even more shocking when we take into account forms of non-contact abuse, where we see that number rises to 1 in 5 women,” UNICEF child protection specialist Afrooz Kaviani Johnson said in an interview with CBS News Radio. That amounts to approximately 650 million women and girls worldwide who are victims of violence during childhood. Non-contact forms of violence include online and verbal violence.

“It could be sexual harassment, sexual bullying, exposing children to pornography,… sexual grooming of children – things that don’t necessarily have that physical contact element,” Kaviani Johnson told US News and World Report. “With digital technology and the online space, these types of forms have exploded.”

In fragile environments – places where conflict and displacement occur as people flee political or security crises – girls are at even greater risk, with a childhood prevalence of rape and sexual assault of 1 in 4 girls, or more than twice the global average.

“We are witnessing horrific sexual violence in conflict zones, where rape and gender-based violence are often used as weapons of war,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, calling sexual violence against children a “stain on our moral conscience.”

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of cases, followed by East and Southeast Asia. UNICEF researchers collected national statistics from 120 countries and territories for the period 2010 to 2022 to produce the report, the first of its kind to provide global and regional estimates.

Most childhood sexual violence occurs during adolescence

For UNICEF, the data underscore the need for comprehensive prevention and support strategies, especially for adolescent girls.

Most child sexual violence occurs during adolescence, with a significant peak between ages 14 and 17, the data show. Implementing targeted interventions during adolescence is therefore critical to breaking the cycle and mitigating the long-term effects of such trauma.

Survivors often carry the trauma of sexual violence into adulthood, facing greater risks of sexually transmitted infections, substance abuse, social isolation, and mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, as well as challenges in forming healthy relationships. There is evidence that the impact is compounded when children delay disclosing their experiences, sometimes for extended periods, or keep the abuse secret altogether.

What needs to be done to break the cycle

To tackle the problem more effectively, UNICEF calls on government and civil society leaders and other stakeholders to promote solutions that:

• challenge and change social and cultural norms that enable sexual violence and prevent children from seeking help
• providing every child with accurate, accessible and age-appropriate information that enables them to recognize and report sexual violence
• ensuring that every child victim and survivor has access to services that support justice and healing and reduce the risk of further harm
• strengthening laws and regulations to protect children against all forms of sexual violencealso in organizations that work with children, and that invest in the people, resources and systems needed to implement them
• build better national data systems to monitor progress and ensure accountability by implementing international standards such as the International classification of violence against children

Although more girls and women are affected and their experiences are better documented, boys and men are also affected, the data shows. An estimated 240 to 310 million boys and men – or about 1 in 11 – have experienced rape or sexual assault during childhood. This estimate rises to between 410 and 530 million if forms of violence without contact are included.

Persistent data gaps, especially on boys’ experiences and non-contact forms of sexual violence, highlight the need for greater investment in data collection to capture the full extent of sexual violence against children.

UNICEF highlights the issue as government leaders, activists, survivors of violence and youth prepare to gather during the inauguration Global Ministerial Conference on Violence against Children in Bogotá November 7-8.

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