Background and objectives:
In its resolution 61/143 (2006), reconfirmed by resolution 62/133 (2008) on intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women, the General Assembly requested the Statistical Commission to develop and propose, in consultation with the Commission on the Status of Women, and building on the work of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, a set of possible indicators on violence against women in order to assist States in assessing the scope, prevalence and incidence of violence against women. To that end, the Friends of the Chair group was established by the Statistical Commission at its thirty-ninth session (2008) (decision 39/116).

The Friends of the Chair submitted its first report to the Statistical Commission at its 40th session in 2009. The report, adopted by the Statistical Commission, requested the United Nations Statistics Division to initiate and conduct work on developing a set of Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence Against Women that will provide full methodological guidance regarding the selection of core and additional topics, sources of data, relevant statistical classifications, outputs, wording of the questions and all other pertinent issues.

The United Nations Statistics Division prepared the draft of the Guidelines and after internal reviewing and editing it in terms of technical substance, the draft is now ready to be reviewed be experts from both developing and developed countries. The Consultative Meeting scheduled from 8-10 November 2011 in ESCWA premises, Lebanon, will review the draft in its entirety and in detail.

1. Provisional agenda: English / Spanish
2. List of participants
3. Information for participants
4. Documents
   • Paper No. 1: Methodological Overview of Surveys on Violence against Women - UNSD
   • Paper No. 2: Violence against Women in Egypt
   • Paper No. 3: Notes on Violence against Women Indicators - ISTAT
   • Paper No. 4: Notes on Violence against Women Indicators - NSO of Thailand
   • Paper No. 5: Indicators to Measure Violence against Women - NSI of Bulgaria
   • Paper No. 6: The Status of Statistics Pertaining to Violence against Women in the Context of Bangladesh
   • Paper No. 7: Comments on the Proposed Set of Indicators to Measure Violence against
     Women - INEGI Mexico
   • Paper No. 8: National Survey on Violence against Women - Costa Rica
   • Paper No. 10: Statement of the World Health Organization
   • Paper No. 11: Comments for the Agenda - Australia
   • Paper Item 12: Report of the Expert Group Meeting on Measuring Violence against Women
   • Paper Item 13: Proposed draft outline for the Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women, Part I: Statistical Survey - UNSD
5. Conclusions and recommendations
6. Final report