Did you know that around the world, at least one in every three women have been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime?

According to police data in Sri Lanka, rape/incest, sexual abuse and assault are the most highly reported offences. The overall rape/incest data for 2013 indicates that an incident of rape occurs every four hours which is approximately a total of 6 incidents a day in Sri Lanka.

Of the total number of incidents of rape/incest (reported incidents of incest being very few of this total number) almost 85% are of children, mostly girls. On the contrary, women are the majority victims (as opposed to children) in incidents of sexual abuse and incidents of assault from 2011 to 2014. Globally as well as in Sri Lanka, atrocities of Gender-based Violence (GBV) and Sexual Gender-based Violence (SGBV) remain a daily reality for many women and girls, as well as some men and boys. SGBV could take place in urban and rural settings, at places of work, in public spaces and in the confines of one’s own home, where it remains ‘hidden,’ rooted in unequal power relations.

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