According to the report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the UN Women Report on intimate partner/family member femicides:
“The home is the most dangerous place for women and girls.”
Millions of women and girls are trapped in abusive relationships in India. Violence against women is endemic in every state across the country and has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. A husband or intimate partner is the most common perpetrator and a disproportionate number of victims are from poor socio-economic backgrounds.
India has the highest rate of domestic violence among married women (girls) who were married by 18, with a rate of 67%.
Worldwide, 736 million - 1 in 3 - women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence or both.
32% of ever-married women aged between 18-49 have experienced spousal violence.
20 women die every day as a result of harassment over a dowry - either murdered or compelled to commit suicide.
Every 20 minutes, a woman is raped in India and child rape cases have increased by 336% in the last 10 years.
Every day, 7,000 unborn girls are selectively aborted in the womb, just because they are girls.
WHAT WE DO?
Operation PeaceMaker works with communities across India to prevent and respond to domestic violence. Our programmes are active in Hyderabad (Shah Ali Banda, Lakdikapul and Golconda), Secunderabad, and Warangal in Telangana, as well as in Motihari (Bihar), Gumla (Jharkhand), Barshi (Maharashtra), Nainital (Uttarakhand), Tonk (Rajasthan), and the districts of North 24 Parganas, Malda and Howrah in West Bengal. We partner with police officials, schools, colleges, communities, businesses and other community-based organisations to prevent domestic violence and child sexual abuse, and support survivors.
OUR APPROACH
Pillar 1
Prevent through awareness
Our targeted prevention programmes empower local women to become agents of change in their own communities, and equip girls to challenge and break the cycle of violence. These remarkable women are the heart of our work — we proudly call them PeaceMakers.
Pillar 2
Provide support through interventions
We provide survivors and their families with the support they need to rise again — counselling, police support, legal aid, and financial assistance woven together to restore safety, dignity, and hope.
Pillar 3
Protect survivors' safety
No woman should have to choose between danger and survival.
Through our Lotus Fund, we meet survivors in their most fragile moments with need-based support that carries them through, whether that means emergency shelter for them and their children, medical care, safe transport or a way to keep their children in school. And when they need a safe place to rest and heal, we refer them to vetted, trusted safe home.
Pillar 4
Engaging boys and men to be allies
We make significant efforts with our transformative behavioural interventions that engage boys and men in thoughtful ways to shift strongly entrenched social norms and intersecting inequalities that drive violence against women and girls.
OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
Operation PeaceMaker’s Theory of Change is based on lessons from more than a decade of our work in addressing domestic violence, child sexual abuse and current global and national evidence on preventing and responding to domestic violence.