“Every day, on average, 137 women are killed by a member of their own family,” said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director, in a statement released in March last year. These appalling figures are just one of the many consequences of gender-based violence and abuse, namely domestic abuse, which is defined as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner
Twenty-six years after the Beijing Declaration, which set the target for reaching gender balance in political decision-making, women are still underrepresented across all levels of power