Every 11 minutes, a girl or a woman is killed by an intimate partner or family member, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said, ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25.

“Women and girls also face rampant online violence, from misogynistic hate speech, to sexual harassment, image abuse and grooming by predators,” the UN chief said. “This discrimination, violence and abuse targeting half of humanity comes at a steep cost.”

He added: “It limits women’s and girls’ participation in all walks of life, denies their basic rights and freedoms, and blocks the equal economic recovery and sustainable growth our world needs.”

To end violence against women, Guterres urged world leaders to increase funding by 50% to women rights organisations and movements by 2026.

The UN chief’s comments come in the wake of Shraddha Walkar murder case in Delhi. The 26-year-old woman from Mumbai was killed by her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala, who later chopped her body into pieces and disposed them off in Delhi.

In a similar case, a man identified as Prince Yadav allegedly killed his former girlfriend and chopped her body into pieces in Uttar Pradesh’s Azamgarh district. He was arrested on November 20.

Earlier in September, a report by the United Nations Women and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs had identified gender-based violence against women as one of the factors that could setback achieving global gender equality by 286 years.

“One in every 10 women and girls aged 15-49 was subjected to sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner in the previous year,” the Gender Snapshot 2022 had said.