7.0 Costs Related to Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG)
7.1 The direct economic costs of violence include:a) Health sector costs,
b) The expenditures of police, judicial, and social service
sectors in responding to victims; and
c) The direct out-of-pocket costs paid by the victims themselves.
7.2 Additional indirect economic costs:a) Result from time lost to productive labour and household services due to
physical disability as a result of a violent incident; and
b) In African countries where women perform up to 70% of agricultural activity,
the labour time lost may have substantial negative impacts on the economy and on
food security. (Diop 2012).
7.3 Costs not estimated
These include:a) Those due to the psychological and emotional impacts of Intimate Partner
Violence/ Violence Against Women (IPV/VAW) on victims and their children,
which are borne at all the individual, household, community and society/nation.
b) Cost on self-realisation by victims.
7.4 Other societal costs that are not captured in cost estimates of Intimate
Partner Violence (IPV)
a) The inter-generational impacts on children's behaviour; such as school
performance;
b) Delinquency and violence which have been measured in both developed and
developing countries but are difficult to express in monetary terms;
c) Children's experience of IPV in the home is also a key contributor to intergenerational persistence of IPV, another unmeasured cost to households,
communities and the nation as a whole; and
d) Studies have found that children who experience or witness domestic violence
are more likely to use violence in their own relationships as adults.
7.5 Who Pays?
Individual;
Household;
Community and
Societal/national; and
Regional.
7.6 Key Policy Implications
a) There is a social and economic cost to VAW, Domestic violence imposes
significant costs both on victims, on communities and on societies; Imposes costs on
the state;
⎯ More focus should be put on the effective enforcement and implementation of
laws and policies with adequate allocation of human and financial resources;