A/HRC/7/6 page 10 34. The acronym SMART has been used to summarize the key attributes of good indicators: • Specific • Measurable • Attainable • Relevant • Time-framed 35. OHCHR has developed this into standards for international human rights indicators, which need to be: • Relevant, valid and reliable • Simple, timely and few in number • Based on objective information and data-generating mechanisms • Suitable for temporal and spatial comparison and following relevant international statistical standards • Amenable to disaggregation in terms of sex, age and other relevant variables 36. With respect to violence against women, we can add: • Grounded in human rights commitments and cross-cutting principles • Based on internationally accepted definitions • Not open to misinterpretation or generating spurious results Measuring violence against women 37. States have been called “to develop crime surveys on the nature of violence against women”;13 from the outset, this call was to address the full range of violence against women. However, the Secretary-General’s study notes that, while population-based prevalence studies have been undertaken in over 50 countries - 68 since 1995 - the majority are limited to intimate partner violence. Limiting an outcome indicator on violence against women to intimate partner violence has been justified on the grounds that data are more available and intimate partner violence is the most common form of violence against women. Such an approach not only ignores the standards set in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women; it also may not be accurate, given the under-researching of other forms of violence against women 13 General Assembly resolution 52/86.

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