According to the Global Peace Index , Denmark has been among the top 5 safest countries in the world for 16 years.
In media reports, institutional rankings and the popular imagination, Denmark is widely acknowledged as one of the happiest countries. In fact, after declining during the pandemic, the number of cases of reported violence increased by 16 percent from to In step with this, the number of reported victims increased by 14 percent between in , ending a five-year downward trend. The proportion of cases in which there are female victims has been higher than male since the earliest record of this metric in In , there was a pronounced disparity in the gender split of the reported victims: 54 percent were female, while 41 percent were male.
The gap is especially large regarding sexual offences. Female victims overwhelmingly outnumber males, and the difference has grown since Violence in the news Recently, high-profile cases of violence in which the victim or victims are female have appeared in Danish headlines.
After Stevn went missing after a night out with friends, her dismembered body was discovered with signs of attempted rape. A stranger to Stevn, year-old Thomas Thomson, was convicted of her murder. This April , a year-old girl was abducted and raped on her way home by a year-old man. The perpetrator was sentenced to prison, and charged additionally with kidnapping, raping, and killing year-old Emilie Meng in Grades of violence against women While extreme cases of kidnapping or murder occur relatively rarely, other forms of sexual, physical or verbal violence against women are commonplace.
Unexplained animosity, verbal aggression, and physical assaults also constitute violence. When these incidents go unreported by the media or the police, they often leave an indelible mark on the lives of the victims.
