Victims of domestic violence 2016 to 2017

You asked

Please provide information in relation to domestic violence or intimate partner violence cases during the year 2016 to 2017, that involved West Africans citizens living in the UK.

I am predominantly interested to find out statistics about victims that were originating from Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Niger, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Saint Helena, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Liberia.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry in which you asked for statistics about West African women who have been victims of domestic violence.

To best answer your request from our available data, we have provided estimates from the Crime Survey for England Wales (CSEW) for the year ending March 2017 of the percentage of women who have been a victim of any domestic abuse and who were born in the West African countries. Any domestic abuse includes non-physical abuse, threats, force, sexual assault or stalking carried out by a partner/ex-partner or family member. We have also provided the percentage of women who had been a victim of partner abuse and who were born in the West African countries.

For this analysis, we have grouped together women who were born in: Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Ivory Coast, The Gambia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, St Helena, Ascension and Tristan Da Cunha, Senegal, Togo, Cape Verde and Liberia.

Findings from the year ending March 2017 CSEW are:

• 7.5% of all women aged 16 to 59 were a victim of domestic abuse once or more in the last year

• 5.9% of all women aged 16 to 59 were a victim of partner abuse once or more in the last year

Equivalent findings for women who were born in any of the selected West African countries are:

• 4.8% of women aged 16 to 59 were a victim of domestic abuse once or more in the last year

• 2.7% of women aged 16 to 59 were a victim of partner abuse once or more in the last year

Estimates covering the same time period for all CSEW respondents, are published in our annual supplementary tables (Table S37) in our Crime in England and Wales, year ending March 2017 publication. This can be accessed here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesannualsupplementarytables

Our crime data relate to England and Wales only. Crime statistics for Scotland are published by the Scottish Government, police recorded crime data for Northern Ireland are published by the PSNI and the Department of Justice (Northern Ireland).

Data on the population of the UK by country of birth and nationality can be accessed here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/datasets/populationoftheunitedkingdombycountryofbirthandnationalityunderlyingdatasheets

Please note these are rounded figures so care should be taken when adding multiple years together.

If you have any further questions please email us at crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will endeavour to help.