Aired first on BBC World TV, the critically
acclaimed Women on the Frontline
is a brutally honest account of the silent
war being waged against women across
the world.
As of January 2008, 185 countries were party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Yet UN estimates show that violent abuses not only persist, but are on the rise.
Introduced by Annie Lennox and shot by all-women crews in Nepal, Mauritania, Austria, Turkey, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Colombia and Morocco, these seven films tell the personal stories of the courageous women who have survived abuses and now want their voices to be heard.
In DRC we investigate rape as a weapon of war; in Turkey we hear from women forced into suicides as a way of disguising killings in the name of honour. In Nepal we follow a 24-year-old mother as she helps the authorities track down her sex trafficker; in Mauritania we ask if the movement to abandon the harsher aspects of Sharia law can succeed; in Austria we find a new law banning violent men from their homes; and in Colombia and Morocco we follow the stories of inspiring women who have shown extraordinary courage in the face of violence.
• At least one in three women has been
beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused
in her lifetime, according to a study based on
50 surveys around the world• A fifth of women report being sexually abused before the age of 15
• 500,000 women die from pregnancy and childbirth each year: a number that has changed little in 20 years
• Violence against women kills more women than traffic accidents and malaria combined, according to World Bank estimates
• The World Health Organisation has reported that up to 70 per cent of female murder victims are killed by their male partners
• The prevalence of women in developing countries who experience violence during pregnancy ranges from 4 to 20%, according to the European Journal of Public Health.
• In 48 population-based surveys from around the world commissioned by the World Health Organisation,10to 69 % of women reported being physically assaulted by an intimate male partner at some point in their lives.
