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Abstract
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As the COVID-19 lockdown regulations in the United Kingdom (UK) and in many other countries are gradually easing and life returns to a 'semi-normal' adjustment, governments are now facing the consequences of the lockdown measures which have lasted for several months. Domestic and gender-based violence have increased globally, but the unsettling spikes continue to grow during this pandemic period.
Gender-based violence is a human rights violation, and violence against women and girls is a public health crisis with detrimental impacts on the victims/survivors, their families particularly children and the communities. Recent emerging data highlights that since the outbreak of COVID-19, violence against women and girls, including domestic inter-personal violence and sexual abuse has intensified in several countries.
Although data is often hard to come by and these may well be an under-estimate, it has been reported that since the lockdown in France on 17th March 2020, domestic violence cases rose by 30%. In Argentina, the lockdown was imposed on 20th March 2020, and since then emergency calls from domestic violence cases had risen by 25%. In Cyprus and Singapore, helplines have registered a rise in calls of 30% and 33%, respectively. Finally, there were increased domestic violence cases and a demand for emergency accommodation in Canada, Germany, Spain, the UK and the USA (Mlambo-Ngcuka, 2020).
On 23rd March 2020, the British government failed to take into account the needs of the victims of domestic violence when imposing their lockdown measures and did not adequately foresee the rise in domestic violence incidents. At least 26 women and girls (with the youngest aged just 2 years old) had been killed in suspected domestic homicides in this period. Within the first month, 16 of them were murdered, which was three times more than the number of women killed under similar circumstances in the same period in 2019...
Language: en |