The ICEH postdoctoral fellow Carolina Coll participated in the Sexual Violence Reserach Initiative Forum (SVRI) 2019 held from 21-25 October at the Cape Town International Convention Cenree in Cape Town, South Africa. With over 6600 members, the SVRI is the largest global network for advancing research on violence against women and violence against children and other forms of violence driven by gender inequality.

During the event, the researcher presented about intimate partner violence against women levels and wealth inequalities across 46 low and middle-income countries using Demographic and Health Surveys data. The findings point out that intimate partner violence affects a high proportion of women in low and middle income countries and that marked wealth inequalities exist, with poor women faring worst in the majority of the countries. In India, as an example, gaps of more than 20 percentage points in the prevalence of physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence were found between the richest and the poorest women.

The analyses provide an updated global panorama of intimate partner violence against women levels across low and middle-income countries using comparable data which can serve as a benchmark for future monitoring on leaving no one behind towards achieving the elimination of all forms of violence among women and girls (an essential indicator of the SDG5 on achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls).