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Surveys of victims of crime have been undertaken in many cities and countries, using a common methodology to aid comparability, and have generally included questions on sexual violence. The United Nations has conducted extensive surveys to determine the level of sexual violence in different societies. According to these studies, the percentage of women reporting having been a victim of sexual assault ranges from less than 2% in places such as La Paz, Bolivia , Gaborone, Botswana , Beijing, China , and Manila, Philippines , to 5% or more in Istanbul, Turkey , Buenos Aires, Argentina , Rio de Janeiro, Brazil , and Bogota, Colombia.
No distinction has been made in these figures between rape by strangers and that by intimate partners. Surveys that fail to make this distinction or those that only examine rape by strangers usually underestimate substantially the prevalence of sexual violence.