ABSTRACT : ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe’ is the battle cry to protect everyone from the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the world. While the global health emergency has posed an unprecedented threat to all, a shadow pandemic is ironically making homes, thought of as safe spaces, unsafe for many women. Countless women are now trapped with perpetrators: they cannot go out, are cut off from their friends, unable to make calls and complain, or move to a safe place like their parents’ homes.

COVID-19 is already testing us in ways most of us have never previously experienced, providing emotional and economic shocks that we are struggling to rise above. The violence that is emerging now as a dark feature of this pandemic is a mirror and a challenge to our values, our resilience and shared humanity. We must not only survive the corona virus, but emerge renewed, with women and children as a powerful force at the centre of recovery.