HEUNI participates in the International Forum of the Korean Institute of Criminology

HEUNI’s Senior Programme Officer Inka Lilja presented at the 4th International Forum of the Korean Institute of Criminology in December 2017. The theme of the Forum was Strategies for Implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals to Build Better Societies. In conjuction with the forum the yearly coordination meeting of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme Network (PNI) was held. HEUNI is the acting coordinator of the PNI together with the Raul Wallenberg Institute.

Ms Lilja’s presentation was titled Successes and failures in measuring violence against women – lessons learned for operationalizing indicator 5.2.1. HEUNI has been developing and conducting for the past 15 years victimization, and in particular violence against women, surveys. The presentation covered some of the main lessons learned from these experiences and compered different data collection methodologies in relation to the indicator 5.2.1. of the Sustainable Development Goal 5.

Violence against women is a hidden crime with quite low reporting rates all over the world. As with any other hidden phenomena, carefully crafted methodologies for detecting and researching the phenomena are needed. The different methodologies have their pros and cons in relation to how well they reveal the prevalence, how much resources are needed for the data collection, and the usability of the results for policy making.

As the indicators measuring the fulfillment of Sustainable Development Goals’ targets are used globally, in different countries with different legislation, different data collection resources and different policies and services for victims of violence, it is worthwhile to consider the strength and weaknesses of different methodologies for collecting data on violence against women, in order to choose the most sound and practical tool for the measurement. In the end, the most important factor for choosing the methodology should be the usability of the data in ending violence. In this regard, data which captures the prevalence and actual experiences of victims of violence, and which can be used to influence policy making, and to improve services provided to prevent and to assist victims of violence, is most useful.

To learn more about HEUNI’s work related to measuring violence against women and victimization surveys go here