5112 cases of violence against women in 2024; Punjab tops list

ISLAMABAD: A civil society organization reveals in a report issued Wednesday that a total of 5,112 cases of violence against women were reported in 2024 across Pakistan.

The NGO Sahil compiled the report on bases of the data collected from 81 different newspapers of all four provinces, including Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), and Gilgit Baltistan (G-B).

The United Nations defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”

According to the Sahil’s report, 73 per cent of the total cases were reported from Punjab, 15 per cent from Sindh, eight per cent from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and two per cent each from ICT, Balochistan, AJK, and G-B.

The NGO noted that abusers involved in 33 per cent of the total cases were acquaintances, 14 per cent were husband, 10 per cent were strangers, while 22 per cent were unknown/unidentified.

The report also shows that the cases of violence against women reported from across the country include different forms of violence, such as murder, suicide, abduction, rape, honour killing, and torture.

In 2024, 1,273 cases of murdered, 799 cases of abduction, 579 cases of tortured, 533 cases of rape, and 380 cases of the suicide were reported.

The data reveals that out of the total reported cases, five per cent of victims were under 18 years, while the remaining 95 per cent were adults.

The data also shows that the age group of 21-30 years is continuously most vulnerable to abuse.

A total number of 459 cases from the age bracket of 21-30 years, 444 cases from the age brackets of 11-20 years, 167 cases from the age bracket 31-40 years, and in 3,261 cases age of the victims were not mentioned.

According to World Health Organization (WHO), “about 1 in 3 (30pc) of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.”

Read next: Pakistan sees alarming increase in child sexual abuse cases