Population size:
28,608,710 [1]
Number of people experiencing domestic abuse each year:
Women who have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime: 25%
Women who have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence in the last 12 months: 112% [2]
National-level data derived from various sources show that GBV and IPV are a latent problem in Nepal. According to the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2011, 22% of women had experienced violence since they were15 years of age and among them 12% had experienced sexual violence (Government of Nepal, 2012b). Similarly, Lammichhane et al. (2011) conducted a cross-sectional study in 2009 among 1,296 young married women in four major ethnic groups and found that more than half (51.9%) reported having ever experienced some type of violence from their husband. Data from the DHS 2011 show that 84% of perpetrators in cases of domestic violence are the husband. The same report also shows that overall, one-third of married women in Nepal experience domestic violence from their spouse. Other data from the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (2012) on rural districts found that estimates of IPV ranged from 30% to 81% depending on the district and type of IPV assessed (Government of Nepal, 2012a).
Of 1800 eligible participants, 455 (25.28%) were exposed to IPV. In multivariate analyses, low caste, wife employment, income stress, poor marital communication, quarrelling, husband drunkenness, exposure to IPV as a child, in-law violence, and gender inequitable normative expectations were associated with IPV. [4]
According to the Demographic and Health Survey,28% of women reported lifetime exposure to physical and/or sexual IPV, and half of these women (14%) reported exposure in the prior 12months. However, only 23% report help-seeking (Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) [Nepal], New Era et al., 2012); [5]
A 2012 study by the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers indicated that 48 % of respondents had experienced violence and 28 % in the past 12 months [8]. However, in another study in Dang and Surkhet indicated 81 % incidence while 51 % incidence in another study done in Nepal [18, 20]. Wide variation in the prevalence across studies stressed the importance of conducting additional studies on similar topic because of contextual variability of violence. Sexual violence reported in this study is remarkably lower than other similar studies [9] and it might be due to the underreporting in rural settings where people generally don’t complain about male members at any cost because of cultural norms and are scared to expose their personal issues. Comparable findings were found in a study conducted in Kathmandu, where corresponding figures for physical, psychological and sexual violence were 16.7, 35.5 and 3.6 % respectively [14]. Results of our study largely corroborate the findings from Nepal and all over the world such as in India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Iran etc [24–27]. [6]
No research on male victims or other gender identities.
Cost of domestic abuse to the economy each year:
No research.
Estimated % change due to COVID-19:
The Women’s Rehabilitation Centre in Nepal, reported 465 cases of GBV between March 24 and May