The global magnitude of GBV is such that nearly 50 percent of all sexual assaults worldwide are against girls 15 years or younger, according to a 2003 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report. A multi-country WHO study (2003) established that between 15 percent and 71 percent of women report physical or sexual violence by a husband or partner; between 4 percent and 12 percent of women reported being physically abused during pregnancy, and up to one in five women and one in 10 men report experiencing sexual abuse as children. According to WHO, an estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of female genital mutilation (FGM).  Economic and cultural forms of GBV are globally acknowledged and contribute to vulnerabilities experienced especially by women and girls.

War and general instability in the East and Central African region continues to catalyze the occurrence of GBV. For instance in the Democratic Republic of Congo, UNFPA reported 15,996 new cases of sexual violence in 2008. 19 percent of 1,575 Burundian women surveyed by UNFPA in 2004 had been raped; 40 percent had heard about or had witnessed the rape of a minor. According to a 2003 study, one in three women in rural Uganda are subject to verbal or physical threats from their partners, while fifty percent of those women who have been threatened subsequently receive injuries. Beating a female partner was viewed as justifiable in certain circumstances by seventy percent of the male respondents and ninety percent of the female respondents, according to a study in rural Uganda.

The Kenya Demographic Health Survey (2008-09) showed that almost half (45 percent) of women aged 15-49 have experienced either physical or sexual violence. In terms of specific forms of GBV, the report reveals that 25 percent of women have experienced only physical violence, 7 percent have experienced only sexual violence, and 14 percent have experienced both physical and sexual violence. Kenya Police crime records for 2007 showed 1,151 cases of rape and 1,782 cases of defilement as having taken place in Kenya. The Waki Report (2008) on post election violence in Kenya  notes that approximately 524 or 80%  of survivors of  GBV treated at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital alone suffered from rape and defilement, 65 or 10% from domestic violence with the remaining 10% from other types of physical and sexual assault. The KDHS report (2008-09) also indicated that 3% women had perpetrated physical violence against their husbands or partners.