GBV gets worse in any crisis and COVID-19 is no exception. Governments worldwide have introduced social distancing and lockdown-type, stay-at-home measures to contain the disease, but those same restrictions have created conditions conducive to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of the most vulnerable members of society.
Those who are abused by family members, often have little or no access to the usual routes of escape. Additionally, fewer visitors to the household means that evidence of physical abuse is more likely to go unnoticed. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the world has witnessed a surge in domestic violence cases since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Townsend, 2020).