Statement by Ms. Dubravka šimonoviæ, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences at the 71th session of the General Assembly

Third Committee, Item 27
10 October 2016
New York

Mr. President, Madame Chairperson, distinguished delegates, representatives of the United Nations and the NGO community,
It is with great pleasure that I address the 71st session of the General Assembly in my capacity as Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences.  A year ago, when I addressed this august forum for the first time, I had only been for two months in this position. Since then, I have defined the thematic priorities for my mandate in a report I presented at the Human Rights Council last June where I have also laid down the general context and main trends and challenges posed by violence against women. Let me briefly indicate the thematic priorities that I intend to focus on during my tenure. These include the protection of and services for women survivors of violence;  the possibility of formulating a global code of conduct for security and police forces;  violence against women in the context of forced displacement and refugee flows;   the examination of the connections between fundamentalism or extremism and gender-based violence against women and its root causes;  the building of capacity for legal profession and law enforcements officials dealing with VAW;  the new challenge posed by online violence against women, the elimination of discriminatory laws and their negative impact in perpetuating or contributing to violence against women and violence against women in politics. It is a long list and it could be addressed only with your help and support.

Allow me now to turn to the thematic report I am presenting to you today.

The first section of this report provides an update on the debate surrounding the adequacy of the legal framework on violence against women initiated by my predecessor and contains the views received from global mechanisms, namely the CEDAW Committee and the Working Group on Discrimination against Women in law and in practice and regional mechanisms, namely:  the Committee of Experts of the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI),  the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Council of Europe Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC), the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and  the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa following my call for input. This is an ongoing process and I am currently receiving input from Member States and other interested stakeholders to provide input on five questions relating to the potential need for a separate legally binding treaty on violence against women. Here I would like to repeat the call I have made, especially to States or regional groups in order to collect views from all stakeholders.  I will continuously report on this process until its completion. The second part of the report is dedicated to prevention of femicides and contains a set of recommendations for the establishment of the Femicide watch or Gender related killings of women watch and/or observatories on VAW.

Last year, on 25 November 2015, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, I called on all States to establish a “femicide watch”, or a “gender-related killing of women watch.  I am committed to make the issue of femicides, which is the killing of women because of their sex and/or gender, one of the focus areas of my mandate for the years to come. The report I am therefore presenting today is to been seen as a first step in this endeavor. Research on homicides resulting from intimate-partner violence demonstrates that females are at a far greater risk than males. In 2012, 47 percent of all female murder victims were killed by a family member or intimate partner, compared with only 6 percent of male victims. Overall, there are significant shortcomings in national prevention systems, a lack of reliable and disaggregated data and risk assessments, and concealment and underreporting of gender-related killings.

The aim of my report is to provide guidance to States on modalities to establish femicide watch.

Key steps that have been taken at the intergovernmental level to combat femicides need to be acknowledged. In 2013, the General Assembly adopted a resolution expressing its deep concern for gender-related killing of women and girls and the high levels of impunity. It called for renewed action, invited Member States to strengthen their criminal justice systems, and requested the Secretary-General to convene an open-ended intergovernmental expert group. This meeting, held in Bangkok in 2014, developed a very useful set of recommendations with practical steps to combat femicides. In 2015, the Secretary General presented a report to the General Assembly on femicides, reiterating these recommendations and in its wake, the General Assembly adopted  a second resolution reiterating its call for action and calling for enhanced international cooperation, integrated and comprehensive strategies, addressing impunity, community mobilization and awareness-raising, and support to victims, among other actions and requesting UNODC to prepare an analytical study on gender-related killings of women and girls at the global level with disaggregated data.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes gender-based violence as a major obstacle to social and economic development and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The actions I propose today are important in carrying out SDG 5 on achieving gender equality and empowerment of all girls as well as the other goals for which gender equality and women’s empowerment are considered “a crucial contribution to progress”. VAW is specifically addressed in target 5.2 on the elimination of all forms of violence against all women and girls and extremely relevant to target 5.1 on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against all women and girls.

Eliminating femicides is additionally relevant to SDG 16 and target 16.1 to “Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere” and target 16.2 to “End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children.” These actions are additionally relevant to SDG 11 to “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and some of its targets.

Implementation of the 2030 global framework offers a new opportunity to accelerate progress in achieving gender equality and empowerment of women and girls through improving data collection on violence against women, and femicide in particular. Femicide watch is a very concrete national mechanism for such data collection but also for its use as a tool of prevention.  Data requirements to effectively monitor the SDGs will be substantial and require significant investments and capacity-building and establishment of the femicide watch could be a part of this process that could be supported by relevant UN agencies, including UN Women, OHCHR, UNODC, and my mandate.

In my report I also recognize certain good practices on femicides and data collection and will highlight some of them now. At the national level, there are few commendable initiatives such as the “Domestic Violence Fatality Review” in Washington State USA which collects data on all domestic violence related homicides and suicide deaths within that State. Teams review the events leading up to the deaths and examine how community systems responded to domestic violence, identifying gaps in laws, policy, practice, training and resources, and making recommendations. The “Femicide Census” project in the UK reports on perpetrators and victims, with a wide range of information about women killed by fatal male violence. Data is gathered from publicly available resources and disaggregated by age, nationality, ethnicity, occupation of victim and perpetrator, health, pregnancy status of the victim, relationship status of the victim and perpetrator, and nearness of death date to date of separation. In the report, I am calling all States and other stakeholders to send me examples of good practices in this area. 

At the regional level, the Latin American Model Protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women provides guidelines for conducting an effective criminal investigation of gender-related killings. It seeks to address the impunity, contamination of crime scenes, the culture of discrimination from judges, and the high dependence on witness testimonies. Recognizing that the violence affecting women is determined not only by their sexual or gender status, but also by economic status, culture, age, race, language, and religion, it requires an intersectional analysis of the forms of violence that may have affected the victim before, during, or after the crime. Several Latin American countries are working to integrate this Protocol into their legal systems. In the report, I am also calling States and other stakeholder to provide to my mandate other examples of legislative initiatives that already exist in this field.

Various international, regional, and national courts have also created jurisprudence on femicide. I intend to establish an online collection of landmark court cases on femicides to offer publicly available examples of the application of relevant international, regional and national standards. I am calling States, courts, academia and all stakeholders to submit to my mandate all such cases from regional and national courts that could form this online global database.

I conclude my report with a set of recommendations aimed at facilitating the establishment of femicide watches or observatories on violence against women.  These could be either established as separate mechanisms or mechanisms attached to existing national mechanisms or other observatories on violence against women. These panels should be established as interdisciplinary bodies with the inclusion of legal professionals, and connected to or integrated with existing mechanisms on prevention of violence against women. These femicide watches or review panels should analyse data on femicides and propose concrete measures to reduce the prevalence of this crime as well as develop a set of risk factors to prevent such violence and protect women and girls from femicide.

In order to effectively combat violence against women, States should increase their data collection and disaggregate data according to gender and other categories. Data collection is broadly recognized in international human rights law, including in CEDAW and recommendations made by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. I recommend that states publish on an annual basis data on the number of femicides, disaggregated by age and ethnicity of victims, and the sex of the perpetrators, and indicating the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. Furthermore, information concerning the prosecution and punishment of perpetrators should also be collected and published. Femicides should also be disaggregated under subcategories of intimate partner femicide/family related femicide, and other femicides. Capacity-building should also be offered to police and prosecution offices on risk assessment and risk management, and specialized units should be established focusing on violence against women.

Establishing femicide watches at the national and regional level will place a much needed emphasis on the analysis of these statistics and data and ultimately act as a catalyst for prevention and legal, cultural, institutional and operational change. Each femicide case deserves to be carefully studied to identify any failure of protection, with a view to improving and further developing preventive measures. Additionally, femicide watches by their mere existence will increase awareness about this most extreme form of gender-based violence against women and galvanize actions for its prevention. 

In conclusion let me briefly mention country visits.  Since last year, I have conducted visits to South Africa and Georgia and country visit reports were presented last June at the 32nd session of the Human Rights Council and are available on the website of the mandate. I am calling on both States to implement the recommendations contained therein and invite all relevant UN agencies, and especially those present on the ground, to provide them adequate technical and support in this regard. More recently, I have visited both Israel and the OPT/State of Palestine and will report on those next June at the Human Rights Council. I am grateful to Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria and Bahamas where I have been invited and will conduct visits in a near future.

I thank you all for your kind attention and I look forward to a fruitful interactive dialogue.