Troubling headlines that no one saw coming appeared on Monday, Nov. 26 when a new report found the home to be the “most dangerous place” for women.

According to the 2018 report on the gender-related killing of women and girls conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), out of the estimated 87,000 women killed last year, more than half of them — 50,000 — were killed by someone they knew or trusted.

“While the vast majority of homicide victims are men, women continue to pay the highest price as a result of gender inequality, discrimination, and negative stereotypes,” UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said in a statement that accompanied the report. “They are also the most likely to be killed by intimate partners and family.”

With Asia having the highest number of women killed by partners or family members last year (20,000), followed by Africa (19,000), the Americas (8,000), Europe (3,000) and Oceania (300), one thing is clear: Domestic violence and abuse are very real and as a result, women are dying in the hands of people they know because of the lack of help and protection from services and organizations.

As a woman, I know how important it is to feel safe in any environment, especially at home.

But we are constantly having to second guess the people we love and trust, because according to the UNODC report, they are the ones that are taking our lives.

The UNODC knows this is a problem and have called for a series of measures through their Global Study on Homicide report. They have asked the police, the criminal justice system and health and social services to step up and help prevent violence against women. They believe that if everyone gets on board, it can ensure victim safety and empowerment as well as obtain accountability from the offender.

They also think that men’s involvement is critical in addressing the problem. “In order to prevent and tackle gender-related killing of women and girls, men need to be involved in efforts to combat intimate partner violence/family-related homicide and in changing cultural norms that move away from violent masculinity and gender stereotypes,” the report said.

I believe this is the right direction, to preventing violence against women. Men need to become educated and aware of the ugliness and wrongness of abuse and domestic violence.

Women have the right to feel safe and shouldn’t have to constantly look over their shoulders.

So, I think the UNODC got it right, it’s about time that organizations stepped it up and did something that can help women across the globe. It’s time for women to take back their homes.