Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
7 Figures: Prevalence of Violence Against Children
7 Figures: Prevalence of Violence Against Children
May 14, 2026 2:07 PM

The UNICEF report Hidden in Plain Sight, which draws on the pilation of data on violence against children, reveals the disturbing prevalence of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of children around the globe.

According to the report the effects of violence on children are often lasting and have inter-generational repercussions. Findings reveal that exposed children are more likely to e unemployed, live in poverty, and be violent towards others. The authors of the report note that the data is derived only from individuals who were able and willing to respond, and therefore represent minimum estimates.

Here are seven figures you should know from the latest report:

1. Around 120 million girls under the age of 20 worldwide (about 1 in 10) have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts, and one in 3 ever-married adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 (84 million) have been victims of emotional, physical or sexual mitted by their husbands or partners.

2. One fifth of homicide victims globally are children and adolescents under the age of 20, resulting in about 95,000 deaths in 2012.

3. Homicide is the leading cause of death among males between 10 and 19 years old in Panama, Venezuela, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Guatemala and Colombia. Nigeria has the highest number of child homicides – 13,000. Among countries in Western Europe and North America, the United States has the highest homicide rate.

4. Slightly more than 1 in 3 students between the ages of 13 and 15 worldwide are regularly bullied in school; in Samoa, the proportion is almost 3 in 4. Almost a third of students 11 to 15 years old in Europe and North America report bullying others – in Latvia and Romania, nearly 6 in 10 admit to bullying others.

5. Close to half of all adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 (around 126 million) believe a husband is justified in hitting his wife under certain circumstances. The proportion rises to 80 per cent or more in Afghanistan, Guinea, Jordan, Mali and Timor-Leste.

6. In 28 of 60 countries with data on both sexes, a larger proportion of girls than boys believe that wife-beating is sometimes justified. In Cambodia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Rwanda and Senegal, girls are around twice as likely as boys to think a husband is sometimes justified in hitting his wife.

7. Data from 30 countries suggest that about seven in 10 girls 15-19 years old who had been victims of physical and/or sexual abuse had never sought help: many said they did not think it was abuse or did not see it as a problem.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
In defense of boring problems
Bjorn Lomborg has a better Powerpoint presentation than Al Gore. He’s also a more captivating speaker, and uses decent logic in his presentations. Is there any way we can get him an Oscar for the following 17 minute tour-de-force? Via Planet Gore, where a bunch of contemptible low-lifes hang out and engage in that filthy practice on a par with Holocaust denial – Climate Change Skepticism. I shudder just thinking about it. Oh, and Jay Richards blogs there too, the...
Acton.org makes it through the wall
Good news (at least I think it is). Acton.org is a site not blocked by the “Great Firewall of China” (i.e. government censors). A big HT to GetReligion (which is blocked). ...
A Faustian bargain
As a follow-up to the rather wide-eyed optimism I expressed in a post almost a year ago, the city of Grand Rapids has rejected the sole bid application received for development of property on the Grand River. Duane Faust’s group did submit materials by the deadline, but the application lacked $65,000 in fees. reports that there were two other developers in the running, but “Faust’s bid was the only offer e into the city offices on Friday, but without $65,000...
Advanced technology for eternal truth
Have you heard about Logos Bible Software? Here’s a bit about the founding of pany from the February NewsWire update (and on their blog here): “A couple of young Microsoft programmers with their entire careers of high-pay and lucrative Microsoft stock options ahead of them, dropped everything to join a partner and risk it all on pursuing their dream.” The story continues: “They weren’t satisfied with using their skills to help businessmen have access to the latest and greatest in...
The happiness conundrum
This piece from the Scientific American examines the difficulty that human beings have achieving happiness even in a world characterized by material prosperity. “Once average annual e is above $20,000 a head, higher pay brings no greater happiness,” writes Michael Shermer, in the context of Richard Lay૚rd’s observation that “we are no happier even though average es have more than doubled since 1950.” Shermer examines various reasons that increases in objective well-being don’t necessarily correspond to increases in subjective well-being,...
Government prayer
In an essay for TCS Daily last week, Arnold Kling wrote, “With or without the words ‘under God,’ the Pledge of Allegiance feels to me like a prayer. It’s a fairly nice prayer, and I have no problem with having it taught in private schools. I have no problem praying for my country — such a prayer is included in the standard weekly service at my synagogue. But government institutions ought not to be telling people how to pray.” The...
Boredom and teen crime
I have discovered this week that Florida has a major problem with teenage violence against the homeless. In a new twist on violent crime incidents the homeless are being attacked across this state regularly. In St. Petersburg two homeless men, ages 43 and 53, were shot to death in January in separate incidents. The two men indicted for these two crimes are 18 and 20. There were 41 incidents of violence against the homeless in 2006, more than in any...
Profit of doom
In a follow up to The Goracle’s energy bill imbroglio, Bill Hobbs has this stunner today: As the controversy over global warming hypemaster Al Gore’s voracious energy-eater mansion rolls on, there’s an angle I think merits deeper investigation than it is currently getting. In its original story, The Tennessean reported that Gore buys “carbon offsets” pensate for his home’s use of energy from carbon-based fuels. As Wikipedia explains, a carbon offset “is a service that tries to reduce the net...
CST and good companies
The John A. Ryan Institute at the University of St. Thomas has been organizing a series of international conferences on Catholic Social Thought and Management Education. The latest was on the topic “The Good Company: Catholic Social Thought and Corporate Social Responsibility in Dialogue.” You can access a number of the papers through this site. These conferences are usually a mixed bag, so investigate at your own risk. But there are always a few outstanding presentations and this edition is...
Global warming + UFO conspiracy = crazy delicious!
Behold the rise of the perfect coalition: the climate change brigades and the Roswell True Believers! A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change, a local paper said Wednesday. “I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation … that could be a way to save our planet,” Paul Hellyer, 83,...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved