Social equity & human rights
Gender-Based Violence (GBV)
Violence directed at a person because of their gender or that affects one gender disproportionately, rooted in unequal power relations — including physical, sexual, psychological, and economic harm.
Definition
Gender-based violence is violence that is directed against a person because of their gender or that affects persons of a particular gender disproportionately. It includes acts inflicting physical, mental, or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion, and other deprivations of liberty, occurring in public or private life; discrimination and unequal power relations between women and men are its root causes.
References
authoritative definition
scope and prevalence
Overview
What it means
GBV is an umbrella term covering intimate-partner violence, sexual violence, harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation, trafficking, and socio-economic violence such as denial of resources. Globally, more than one in three women experience violence in their lifetime, with risks escalating in conflict and crisis settings.
How it is used
The term structures prevention and response programming in humanitarian and development work, national legislation, SDG target 5. 2 monitoring, and corporate due diligence on workplace and supply-chain safety.
Why it matters
GBV is both a human-rights violation and a barrier to every other development goal — health, education, economic participation — and climate stress and displacement are recognised amplifiers of risk.
Review
Public comments appear only after editor acceptance. Draft comments stay in the review queue.
Reviewers choose the definition or an overview paragraph, leave a comment or replacement, and attach evidence or a source link.
Editors compare reviewer cards side by side. AI may help find agreement, conflicts, unsupported claims and possible source issues.
Only an editor-accepted synthesis changes the public page. Reviewer identities are shown only with consent and an editorial decision to attribute them.
Submitted reviews stay private until an editor decides whether to accept and attribute them.
Contribute to this entry
Help improve this definition
Your contribution is private while it is checked. Nothing changes on this page unless an editor accepts it.
Loading verified endorsements… Endorsements are not votes and never determine publication.
Endorse this definition
Endorse the exact version shown here. This is not a vote, and publication remains an editorial decision.
Review board
Comment on a specific line. Each reviewer stays separate until an editor accepts a merged draft.
Each person comments on the definition or overview in their own draft card, with role, evidence and suggested wording kept together.
AI can compare comments against the current text, flag conflicting claims, surface missing evidence and identify where reviewers agree.
An editor merges compatible suggestions into a draft change, checks sources, records disagreements and decides what can be published.