The World Health Organization has flagged another global pandemic. This time, it is violence against women, including women being beaten or killed in their homes through domestic violence, even in countries like Switzerland and Sweden.
Alongside this grow other near pandemics, those of historically unprecedented income and social inequality burgeoning mostly unchecked around the world; a peace plan in Gaza that brings no social justice or sustainable tranquillity to that wrecked people; a peace plan for Russia/Ukraine that flatly ignores Ukrainian leaders and their European Union financiers and arms suppliers; a massive $100 million corruption scandal in Kyiv; and accusations of sedition against US parliamentarians opposed to the US military’s unlawful bombing in neighbouring seas against alleged drug traffickers.
At first glance, such developments might seem unrelated, but their injustices are interdependent. Together, they signal a global rush towards chaos that is turning the world’s family of nations into a lawless place, where strong militaries prey with impunity on the weak. Meanwhile, well-armed and war-hardened terrorists proliferate, as many nations fail in their quests for safety in a shattered world system.
For India, the implications are that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign, trade and security policies must break out of their current self-imposed limits on asserting Indian autonomy. They have successfully overcome India’s legacy of diffidence towards Western powers. The time has now come to move frankly towards leadership in steering chaos-affirming trends in ways that bring social justice to the global majority of people. India has already convincingly demonstrated its economic success and resilience, improved domestic social justice and greater military power in recent years. It should no longer hesitate to show the power-crazed US and Europe a better way to stop sowing more seeds of injustice that emerge later as more wars, hatreds and predatory economic behaviour.
“Violence against women is one of humanity’s oldest and most pervasive injustices, yet still one of the least acted upon,” rightly noted WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus, pointing to the worst deeds. “No society can call itself fair, safe or healthy while half its population lives in fear.”
“Violence against women is a global problem of pandemic proportions,” added a new report by the WHO and UN partners. “It causes devastating harm to women’s lives and that of their children. It also hurts the economic and social health of their families, communities and countries.”
Nearly one in three women – estimated 840 million globally – have experienced partner- or stranger-sexual violence during their lifetime, a figure that has barely changed since 2000. In the last 12 months alone, 316 million women – 11 per cent of those aged 15 or older – were subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. About 263 million women have experienced non-partner sexual violence since age 15, a significantly under-reported figure due to stigma and fear. In the past year, 12.5 million adolescent girls 15-19 years of age or 16 per cent, have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner.
The report says a quarter of humanity, about 2.3 billion people, face moderate or severe food insecurity – an explosion, compared to just 335 million in 2019
Violence can happen to any woman, in any country – regardless of culture, religion or economic status. For example, Switzerland recorded a 6 per cent increase in domestic violence offences in 2024, with women accounting for nearly 70 per cent of victims. In Sweden, 46 per cent of women have experienced violence, which is 13 per cent higher than in the EU overall, where one in three women has experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 15.
Simultaneously, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz are crying in the wilderness about another global near pandemic that fuels civil wars, persistent poverty and terrorism. They have presented a scary report on global inequities at the G-20 in South Africa, which group's founder US, has refused to attend because President Donald Trump ridiculously asserts that Ramaphosa is ‘exterminating’ the traditionally wealthy and powerful Afrikaner landowners. To win White heartland votes in the US, he calls it ‘anti-White’ discrimination by black people.
The report says a quarter of humanity, about 2.3 billion people, face moderate or severe food insecurity – an explosion, compared to just 335 million in 2019. Gaps in wealth have accelerated over the past quarter-century, with 90 per cent of the world’s population living in societies shaped by high economic inequality. Most G-20 members, about 600 leading economists and 30 former world leaders want to see the creation of an international panel on inequality, where top scientists would track the scale of this planetary threat. But the US is using its proxies to scuttle it altogether.