A majority of displaced adolescent girls are victimized by violence, according to a new study in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

The study, published in the Journal of Global Health, provides new details on the forms of violence affecting adolescent girls in humanitarian settings, and for the first time, predictors of violence, often perpetrated by family members and intimate partners.

Researchers used tablet computers to survey 1,296 girls, ages 13–19, in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, where conflict has displaced millions within the country, and in refugee camps in the Benishangul–Gumuz region of Ethiopia, home to people fleeing conflict in Sudan and South Sudan.

The majority of adolescent girls (52 percent) reported experiencing at least one form of violence victimization in the previous 12 months: 32 percent reported being hit or beaten, 37 percent reported being screamed at loudly or aggressively, and 27 percent experienced unwanted sexual touching and/or rape. The vast majority of girls reported that their intimate partners and/or other family members were perpetrators of violence.

“Girls in conflict settings are the victims of disturbing patterns of violence beginning in adolescence and even earlier,” says lead author Lindsay Stark, associate professor of Population and Family Health. “Our paper is one of the first to document high rates of violence against conflict–affected girls as young as age 13. Our data show that girls as young as 10 are frequent victims of violence.” In the new study, the researchers identify several context–specific predictors of violence. Ever having a boyfriend and living with an intimate partner are associated with coerced and forced sex in both DRC and in Ethiopia. In the DRC, each year of schooling completed is associated with lower odds of experiencing violence. On the other hand, living only with one’s father and young age are predictors for violence in Ethiopia, but not DRC.

“Attention should be paid to context, and prevention programming should do more to acknowledge the role of intimate partner relationships, and how dating and early marriage often put girls at greater risk for violence,” says Stark. “We also need to work across different levels of society to create safer environments in which conflict–affected girls can grow and thrive.

“A girl’s safety is determined by many factors, from her family’s economic security and approach to parenting, whether she can move freely in public spaces, whether she can attend and stay in school, as well as the larger context, including prevailing gender norms,” she continues.