To protect women, we must first protect girls. To protect girls from sexual violence, we must understand the specific challenges they face. Quality, disaggregated data plays a crucial role in understanding the drivers, nature, and consequences of violence against girls.

We need age-disaggregated data to understand how girls’ experiences of violence change as they grow up and context-specific data to capture the specific nuances of girls’ experiences of violence wherever they are in the world.

Together for Girls and our partners* recently launched first-of-its-kind figures on the prevalence of childhood sexual violence, with specific figures on girls’ experiences of sexual violence. This evidence is crucial to showing decision-makers what must be done to keep girls safe and build societies that put them in the best position to lead healthy, fulfilling lives as women.

Another critical tool to drive action to protect girls and women is the world’s largest source of data on violence against children, the Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS), which provide critical insights into the lifelong consequences of sexual violence against girls.

The lifelong consequences of violence against girls

Ending violence against girls – especially sexual violence – would have a profound impact on global health, education, and GDP. It would give girls the opportunity to grow into the best versions of themselves, free from lasting effects of violent experiences.

It affects girls’ health, relationships, education outcomes, and careers, following them into their adulthood and reverberating across entire societies.

Research into the impacts of sexual violence against girls has found that it is a significant risk factor for schizophrenia, conduct disorder, bipolar disorder, bulimia, self-harm, substance use disorders, anxiety, depression, abortion and miscarriage, HIV/AIDS, STIs, asthma, and type 2 diabetes. Harmful social and gender norms place girls at greater risk. Girls, and especially adolescent girls, are disproportionately affected, both by their peers and adults.

This is a global problem, happening in every country in the world. For instance, VACS data shows that girls aged 18-24 who experienced sexual violence in childhood report higher rates of mental distress than those who did not experience sexual violence in childhood.