The sexual and gender-based violence challenge in Asia

As one of the most populous and diverse regions in the world, Asia reveals both shared patterns of gendered violence and highly localised dynamics. Violence takes multiple and complex forms, shaped by vast socio-cultural, religious, economic, and political diversity.

At the same time, diverse local and regional responses are emerging – calls for legal reforms, feminist movements, and cross-border advocacy – demonstrating that solutions are not absent but unevenly distributed.

While distinct social and cultural contexts strongly influence both the manifestations of violence and the responses to it, applying a broad regional lens to the analysis of patterns of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) across Asia reveals key thematic concerns that demand urgent engagement.

A region of contrasts with a shared crisis

In South Asia, child marriage is widespread despite decades of campaigning to end the practice, and dowry-related violence continues to claim women’s lives. Femicide and so-called honour killings persist, with women murdered for perceived transgressions of family honour.

Many migrant women in Southeast Asia traverse borders only to find violence follows them—facing exploitation through illegal recruitment in origin countries, mistreatment during transit, and insecurity in destination countries where their legal status makes reporting unrealistic. From the displaced Myanmar community in Thailand to Indonesian domestic workers in Singapore and Malaysia, harassment and abuse of women exists in the shadows of booming economies, revealing how SGBV transcends jurisdictions and the lack of transnational accountability.

Despite recent #MeToo in East Asia, technology-facilitated violence has reached crisis proportions. South Korea’s epidemic of technology facilitated violence, including deepfake pornography that surged dramatically in 2024, and Japan’s entrenched pattern of workplace harassment highlight how even high-tech societies lag in protecting women from new forms of abuse.

Meanwhile, Central Asia grapples with the persistence of ‘bride kidnapping’, despite legislative reforms, and Afghanistan stands as a stark reminder of how quickly women’s rights can be rolled back under authoritarian rule.

The gap between law and justice

Common threads run through these diverse contexts. Legal frameworks largely exist on paper—nearly every country has signed international conventions and enacted domestic violence laws—but there are gaps in national laws, enforcement is patchy, institutions under-resourced, and political indifference prevails. The absence of robust monitoring and evaluation systems and the lack of international enforcement mechanisms means that even well-intentioned national reforms fail to translate into tangible protections.

Victim-survivors face profound stigma when seeking justice, while police and courts often push for mediation or reconciliation instead of protection or prosecution. For example, Indonesia’s decades old Anti-Domestic Violence Law remains largely symbolic as most cases are diverted to adat (customary) or religious court mediation, where violence is often normalised as ‘disciplinary’, while police reject complaints and court jurisdictional divides trap survivors between systems. A key issue with the emphasis on mediation is that it ignores the power imbalances between perpetrators and victim-survivors within the process, meaning survivors often agree to terms out of fear or coercion.

For migrant women, the barriers to justice are even higher. Their precarious legal status means reporting SGBV can result in deportation, leaving them trapped between violence and fear of state enforcement. This transnational dimension of vulnerability reveals a critical accountability gap—when women cross borders seeking economic opportunity, their protection falls through jurisdictional cracks.

In Malaysia, domestic workers—who number in the millions—are excluded from legislative protections against sexual harassment, even as they face employer surveillance through bathroom cameras and technology-facilitated extortion. Cultural norms that induce shame further silence survivors, who often fear reputational damage more than continued abuse.

Resistance and resilience

And yet, change is stirring. Women across the region are refusing to remain silent. India’s massive street protests following the 2012 Delhi gang rape forced legal reforms, and the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata in August 2024 sparked nationwide strikes and ‘Reclaim the Night’ protests. The Kolkata case highlights a link between women’s educational and professional advancement and rising violence against them. It suggests female economic agency can trigger a backlash against perceived threats to patriarchal authority.

South Korea’s digital feminism gained renewed urgency confronting the deepfake menace, even amid a political crisis that left the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family without a minister for a year (a Minister has recently been appointed) . Grassroots campaigns against child marriage in Bangladesh demonstrate resilience and sustained resistance to entrenched practices.

Civil society groups, often working with scant resources and in shrinking civic spaces, provide lifelines through shelters, hotlines, and advocacy. International and regional mechanisms—including CEDAW and the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action on Ending Violence Against Women—create frameworks for accountability and knowledge exchange, although their effectiveness varies widely depending on political will and ‘buy-in’ by states.

Technology, too, is becoming a double-edged sword: while it facilitates new forms of abuse, it also enables transnational feminist networks to mobilise and support survivors across borders.

A lesson in political choices

If there is one lesson from Asia’s experience, it is that sexual and gender-based violence is neither inevitable or even simply ‘cultural’; it is the outcome of political and social choices—of governments that fail to enforce laws, of societies that prioritise patriarchal traditions over women’s safety, and of economies that profit from exploiting female insecurity. Addressing SGBV requires more than laws: it demands cultural shifts, stronger institutions, and above all, the willingness to stand with victim-survivors. Breaking the silence is not only a women’s issue; it is a test of democracy, justice, and human dignity in Asia today.

Dr Hyein Ellen Cho is a lecturer in Korean Studies and a key researcher at the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, Monash University, Australia.

Dr Amira Aftab is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie Law School, Australia.

This article is part of a special mini-series published by Asialink’s Insights and the Asia Institute’s Melbourne Asia Review.

Image: Talukdar David / Shutterstock.com