Domestic Violence
One in three women worldwide will face physical or sexual violence, mostly from a partner, and about half never seek help or tell a single person. The barrier isn't awareness, it's that reaching out is dangerous and hard to do quietly.
Estimated women and girls killed by a partner or family member so far this year.
About 1 in 3 women globally, roughly 736 million, have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, mostly from an intimate partner. That share has barely moved in a decade (WHO, 2021).
An estimated 85,000 women and girls were intentionally killed in 2023, and 60 percent of them, about 51,100, died at the hands of a partner or family member (UN Women / UNODC, 2024).
The lifetime economic burden of intimate partner violence in the US alone has been estimated at $5.6 trillion in medical care, lost productivity, and criminal justice costs (CDC; American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2018).
Across 44 economies, an average of 49 percent of women who experienced violence never sought help and never told anyone, formal or informal (World Bank Gender Data Portal, Demographic and Health Survey data).
In WHO's multi-country survey, between 22 and 66 percent of physically abused women told no one about the abuse before being interviewed, a silence gap that holds across very different cultures and income levels (WHO).
Female domestic violence victims in the US are four times more likely than male victims, 24 percent versus 6 percent, to avoid reporting to police out of fear of reprisal from the abuser (Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey).
The evidence points to a specific gap: most survivors don't need more awareness campaigns, they need a way to reach out that an abuser can't see and doesn't require trusting a stranger on the phone. Sophia, built by the Swiss charity SpringACT, is an AI chatbot that runs inside everyday messaging apps so it leaves no separate app icon to find, and its conversations can be deleted on the spot. It walks a survivor through gathering and securely storing evidence, understanding their legal options, and connecting to local helplines and shelters, then hands off to a global network of volunteer lawyers, psychologists, and social workers. Because it asks for nothing but a phone, it reaches people the hotline model structurally can't: the roughly half of survivors who never make that first call.
Sources: WHO (2021, multi-country study), UN Women / UNODC (Femicides in 2023, 2024), CDC / American Journal of Preventive Medicine (2018), World Bank Gender Data Portal, Bureau of Justice Statistics, SpringACT
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A Swiss charity whose AI chatbot Sophia runs inside everyday messaging apps to support domestic violence survivors: securely gathering evidence, explaining legal options, and connecting to local helplines and shelters, all without requiring a separate app or a phone call an abuser could overhear.
