More than half of teenage girls find domestic violence justified

United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) has revealed that more than half of teen-aged girls in Pakistan feel that domestic violence is justified for at least one reason. Girls aged between 15 and 19 think refusing to have sex with husband, is one reason justifying the act
of beating a wife.

And even more than 30% of girls of same age have already experienced the physical or sexual violence in Pakistan. The report entitled ‘Sexual and Reproductive Health of Young People in Asia and the Pacific’, also included the data from Cambodia, India, Bangladesh and Nepal. This report has revealed the similar attitudes about violence against women among teenage boys.

Among them, between 25 and 51 per cent feel that beating a wife is just in nature. The factors have been discovered for such ideologies, are low education-level, unemployment and families past experience and history of violence. These loopholes have been considered for the acceptance of domestic violence by them.

It has been further revealed that Pakistan is one of the countries with the greatest number of adolescents aged between 10 and 19 live with HIV. India with 120,000 HIV-positive adolescents is being on the top, followed by Indonesia (46,000), Thailand (11,000), Myanmar (7,700), Pakistan (7,000), Cambodia (3,500), Iran (3,200), Vietnam (2,600) and Nepal (1,200).

Only 28 per cent of men between 15 and 24 years are aware about sexual health and less than half of 15 and 24 year old girls know about condoms prevent HIV in Pakistan.

-Sonali