The shadow pandemic: 243 million women have experienced physical or sexual abuse in the last year

Lockdown restrictions across the world have only exacerbated existing issues with domestic abuse.

Women take part in a march called by the movement "Ni una menos" against violence against women, and in demand of the right to a safe, free and legal abortion in Buenos Aires, on June 03, 2019. (Photo by Emiliano Lasalvia / AFP) (Photo credit should read EMILIANO LASALVIA/AFP via Getty Images)

Five years ago this week, thousands marched in cities across Argentina in outrage at violence against women and girls. The discovery of the body of a pregnant 14-year-old, Chiara Paez, buried in the garden of her boyfriend’s house, was only the latest in a series of high-profile cases of femicide. It took the nascent Ni Una Menos Movement from social media to the streets.

“It was on the day they discovered Chiara’s body that the idea to demonstrate was born; to take to the streets and shout “stop femicide””, wrote Hinde Pomeraniec, one of the journalists involved in that first call to protest in June 2015. “The seed was a tweet in which Marcela Ojeda, a radio journalist, challenged women across the country with a phrase that is already historic: “They are killing us: Aren’t we going to do anything?”