Daejeon (Republic of Korea) Virtual, 29 October – The “Webinar on Crime Statistics from a Gender Perspective“ marked the launch of the first partnership project between UNODC-KOSTAT Centre of Excellence (CoE) and the United Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (UNSIAP). The webinar brought together national and international thematic experts from National Statistics Offices, Ministries of Justice and Ministries of Gender Equality, representing 61 countries and 115 participants.
The webinar introduced the thematic content of the E-Learning course, namely crime statistics in relation to gender by highlighting basic concepts, methods and frameworks required to compile gender-based crime statistics and providing knowledge on the challenges and opportunities of working with different types of data sources.
The welcoming remarks were given by Mr. Ashish Kumar, Director of UNSIAP, and Ms. Kyungsoon Choi, Head of the CoE. Mr. Kumar opened the event recognizing the needs for statistics to contribute to equality “…as statisticians it is our responsibility that we measure the conditions of women and bring them to the fore of policy and decision-making of the governments and as a society at large” Ms. Choi highlighted the need for this course by stating that “Crime is a threat to peace, justice and security. To prevent crime, especially crimes against vulnerable groups such as women and girls, we need data because we cannot prevent something we don’t know exist. If we do not measure, they will remain buried as if they never happened.”
Expert panellists included Ms. Claudia Baroni, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, who discussed Gender-based Violence from a criminal justice perspective, Ms. Sara Duerto Valero, UN Women, presented on Gender-based Challenges in Asia and the Pacific, and Ms. Henriette Jansen, UN Population Fund, examined VAW Data Collection in the context of COVID-19.
After the presentations, a question and answer session enabled the audience to ask questions, which included discussion on implementing surveys, particularly the need to conduct interviews with appropriate enumerators. Another key topic involved the need for data collection, and ensuring appropriate criminal justice responses, across different groups, with specific reference to sexual violence against men and boys.
The second webinar on “Crime Statistics from a Gender Perspective” will be held on 19 November for course participants to directly engage the lecturers for an interactive session on the course content.
The video of the webinar can be found here Further information on the CoE can be found at Twitter @CoE_UNODC and Facebook @UNODC.KOSTAT.CoE.
