Sexual violence is an insidious and highly prevalent crime perpetuated often with impunity against women and children throughout the world. It is estimated that more than one in five women report a lifetime experience of sexual assault by an intimate partner, and one in three girls report their first sexual experience as forced. Sexual violence is a violation of human rights and a profound public health problem. It can have severe physical and mental health impacts, both immediately and many years after the assault. The short and long term consequences of sexual violence limit the potential of victims/survivors to achieve an optimum standard of health and well-being.

Unfortunately, sexual violence is the least researched form of gender based violence. To date, sexual violence has received insufficient attention from researchers, policy makers and programme designers and it has been a long struggle to have it recognised as a priority public health issue. Particularly disturbing is the virtual silence on sexual violence among those working to improve the health status of women and girls.

To respond effectively to the problem of sexual violence there is a need for reliable data from all regions of the world, but particularly from developing countries and central and eastern Europe. Most of our knowledge about sexual violence internationally has been derived from work with women victims/survivors. There has never been a large population-based study on rape perpetration. Very little research has been conducted on rape prevention and only a handful of theoretically-based interventions have been developed and evaluated. The Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) aims to promote research on sexual violence globally and its use to improve national responses.

Sexual Violence Research Initiative

The SVRI was established as an initiative of the Global Forum for Health Research in 2003, and its Secretariat moved to the Gender and Health Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council in 2006. The SVRI has a Coordinating Group of experts from around the world who provide strategic guidance to the Initiative and currently has a membership of over 800 people from around 80 countries. For more information on the SVRI Coordinating Group visit: http://www.svri.org/group.htm.

Central to the goals of the SVRI is strengthening the research skills of our members and website users, and their capacity to undertake meaningful, policy and advocacy relevant research. A key tool which the SVRI uses for this is the SVRI website (www.svri.org). Here can be found our global research agenda on sexual violence, tools for research, guidelines on ethics and methods and country pages where people can access research findings. The SVRI also produces a bi-weekly e-publication that is sent to members with information on sexual violence in research and in the media, funding opportunities, conferences and other related information.

Participants of SVRI Workshop: Promoting and Strengthening Research Skills/Networks on Sexual Violence, held in India, September 2007

Prevention of sexual violence is ultimately the most important goal in the field of sexual violence and there are many different approaches to it. The absence of reliable data is a significant barrier to prevention programmes and services. There is a need for interventions with men, families, communities and those operating at a societal level to prevent sexual violence and to enhance protection for women. Interventions need to be developed with a rigorous empirical base. There is a need to evaluate and describe the impact of specific interventions, and to understand what may account for changes in societies where the rate of sexual violence is changing.