About 35% of women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence, according to the World Health Organization. “Our message to governments is that they should be reviewing their legislation, their laws, their policies on sexual violence to remove discrimination. The report follows a World Bank study that found 155 of of 173 countries have laws that limit women’s economic opportunities. The report highlighted laws or practices that inhibited the investigation of sexual violence – and required witness corroboration and other “overly burdensome evidence” – in countries including Spain, Luxembourg and Morocco. The report acknowledged that sexual violence is also perpetrated against boys and men, but focused on women and girls because most perpetrators are male and many laws contain explicit discrimination against women.

Source: The Guardian March 06, 2017 00:01 UTC