Prevention of violence
Each year, more than 1.6 million people worldwide lose their lives to violence. For every person who dies as a result of violence, many more are injured and suffer from a range of physical, sexual, reproductive and mental health problems. Violence places a massive burden on national economies, costing countries billions of US dollars each year in health care, law enforcement and lost productivity.WHO works with partners to prevent violence through scientifically credible strategies that are conceived and implemented in relation to causes at the levels of the individual, family, community and society.
New method to assess how ready a country is to tackle child maltreatment
WHO’s Prevention of Violence Team has developed a new method to assess the readiness – or capacity – of a country to implement programmes to prevent child maltreatment on a large scale. Countries around the world and the international community have started to mobilize to address this issue. However, critical to the success of these efforts is an accurate assessment of the readiness of a country to tackle the problem. There are two options when using this new method, called the Readiness Assessment for the Prevention of Child Maltreatment (RAP-CM): a rapid assessment, using a short questionnaire administered to key informants or a full and detailed assessment, which requires a small research team to carry out.
Adults and children with disabilities at much higher risk of violence
Children with disabilities are almost four times more likely to experience violence than non-disabled children, according to a systematic review published in the medical journal The Lancet in July 2012. Another systematic review on violence against adults with disabilities, published earlier this year, found that overall they are 1.5 times more likely to be a victim of violence than those without a disability, while adults with mental health conditions are at nearly four times the risk of experiencing violence. Factors which place people with disabilities at higher risk of violence include stigma, discrimination, and ignorance about disability, as well as a lack of social support for those who care for them.
Prevention activities
- Child maltreatment
- Intimate partner and sexual violence
- Elder abuse
- Collective violence
- Youth violence
- Self-directed violence
- Armed violence
Other prevention activities
- Global status report on violence prevention
- Violence against adults and children with disabilities
- Violence prevention effectiveness studies register
- Adverse Childhood Experiences International Questionnaire (ACE-IQ)
- Building policy to prevent violence: an international collaboration
- Workplace violence in the health sector
