Atrocities on women not acceptable: Ban

Ban was speaking at the inauguration of a multi-year global campaign on Monday to end violence against women, which he said is impeding achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) seeking to drastically reduce or eliminate several social and economic ills by 2015.

"This is a campaign for them. It is a campaign for the women and girls who have the right to live free of violence, today and in the future," he said, adding, "It is a campaign to stop the untold cost that violence against women inflicts on all humankind."

"Violence against women impedes economic and social growth, and thus the new campaign will run until 2015, the target year to achieve MGDs," he said.

Ban acknowledged that there is no "blanket approach" to tackle the scourge, noting that each country must formulate its own measures to address violence against women.

"But there is one universal truth, applicable to all countries, cultures and communities: violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable, never tolerable," the Secretary-General stated, adding that he Rachel N Mayanja, Secretary-General's Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, said while everybody professes that women's contributions are critical to development to everything it hasn't been demonstrated "concretely." "And here we are, halfway through the Millennium Development Goals projected period, and we are still lagging behind," Mayanja said.

Many women have been left out of development efforts because of the violence that is continually being inflicted on them, she said, adding this new campaign will bring a new sense of urgency to bear on this tragic issue.

During the discussions, several speakers, including Prateek Suman Awasthi who works with India-based Men Against Violence and Abuse organisation, stressed that it is more of a structural than a social problem. The violence results when women seek their rights which have been suppressed for long.

Speaking on behalf of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)'s youth advisory, Awasthi said that it was often a tool used to keep women subjugated in societies.

"Achieving development goals, such as universal access to health care, would remain elusive as long as women continued to be raped and abused, sometimes sexually, which, in turn, increased transmission of HIV/AIDS," he said.

The panel also emphasised the need for working with young persons who constituted a substantial percentage in the developing nations and treating it as human rights issue rather than social problem.