Ireland is to take the lead internationally in attempts to tackle gender-based violence, primarily against women.
Former president Mary Robinson yesterday launched the Irish initiative on the issue, which is backed by the Government's aid programme, Development Co-operation Ireland, and a consortium of aid agencies.
Mrs Robinson, who has been asked by the Government to monitor the programme, said she was proud that Ireland was taking such a lead. "Gender-based violence has become sidelined and underestimated and yet it is a fundamental problem," she said.
She defined such violence as any act in a context of gender inequality that resulted in physical, sexual or psychological harm, such as sexual or domestic violence, trafficking, forced marriage or prostitution, and harassment.
More than 60 per cent of people with HIV were women or girls, she pointed out, and girls aged 16 to 24 were six times more likely to become HIV positive than their male peers.
Mrs Robinson, who now works on human rights and development issues in New York, said the abuse of power and violence was behind gender-based violence, which remained a subject "shrouded in silence, impunity and complacency".
Minister of State for development co-operation Conor Lenihan, quoting UN figures, said one in three women in the world had been beaten, coerced into sex or abused in some other way. One in four women had been abused during pregnancy.
"War has exacted an enormous price on women. Rape and sexual violence have all too often become a weapon of war. The horror of these crimes is almost unimaginable," Mr Lenihan said.
A report published yesterday to coincide with the start of the initiative calls on aid agencies to co-ordinate their responses to gender-based violence and to assist in providing health services and adequate security.
Katharina Samara-Wickrama of International Council for Voluntary Associations described the problem of gender-based violence as a pandemic that required "a roar of condemnation" of the perpetrators.
She contrasted the lack of action on the problem with the massive amounts governments were spending now to counter the threatened avian flu pandemic.
"We have to ask why getting the world's attention directed at violence which affects one-sixth of its population is such a challenge," she said.
