News

Today, WHO releases the Violence Prevention Information System - "Violence Info" - a global interactive knowledge platform of scientific findings about the prevalence, consequences, causes and prevention of various forms of violence. The tool contains global, regional and national homicide rates from WHO Global Health Estimates, and country-specific information on laws, policies, strategies and victim services to prevent and respond to violence.

Globally, some 470 000 people are victims of homicide every year. Hundreds of millions more men, women, and children suffer non-fatal forms of violence, including child maltreatment, youth violence, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and elder abuse, with many suffering multiple forms.

Violence also contributes to leading causes of death such as cancer, heart disease and HIV/AIDS, because victims are at an increased risk of adopting behaviours such as smoking, alcohol and drug misuse, and unsafe sex. Beyond its impact on individual victims, violence also undermines the social and economic development of whole communities and societies.

"Violence often scars the lives of individuals for decades, as victims suffer from a wide range of health, social and economic problems," notes Dr Etienne Krug, Director, WHO Department for the Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention. "Yet in recent decades, we have gained the knowledge about how violence can be predicted and prevented. Violence Info should help make this knowledge more easily and widely accessible."

Among the key measures to prevent violence are to:

• Promote education and life skills training

• Limit access to guns, knives, alcohol and drugs

• Support non-violent cultural and social norms

• Foster gender equality

• Provide victim identification and support programmes

• Create safe, stable relationships at home

• Avoid the harmful use of alcohol and drugs

Violence Info is presented at WHO's 8th Meeting on Milestones in a Global Campaign for Violence Prevention. The meeting convenes delegates from around 50 countries in Ottawa, Canada, with the aim of advancing violence prevention, in particular through implementation of policies and programmes to achieve related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets.