International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

UN Women
Why we Must eliminate Violence against Women

SDG 5 (Sustainable Development Goal 5) 

Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Targets

• End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.
• Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.
• Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
• Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.
• Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decisionmaking in political, economic and public life.
• Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences.
• Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws.
• Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women.
• Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.
  

Law graduate and Thai women’s rights activist Thararat Panya, 23, used her experience of sexual assault to drive change at the Thammasat University in Bangkok.

One day, I was out drinking with friends. Everybody was drunk, so we crashed at a friend’s room, which is a pretty normal thing for university students. I woke up during the night to find my friend using his legs to hold me down while he grabbed me... (Continue reading)