Violence Against Women

By Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
25 November 2006

Violence against women is so pervasive that the United Nations Secretary General recently minced no words in defining it as a “pandemic” and, consequently, “one of the most serious challenges of our time.” Every day and everywhere in the world, the lives and rights of millions are imperilled by gender-related abuses. Yet prevention and remedy have been slow to come by. November 25, a day devoted to drawing attention to such violence, offers an opportunity to reflect upon and, more importantly, effectively tackle this global injustice.

Not only do the available data warrant a commitment to action, they demand it. In their daily lives, in families, as citizens, at work or in search of better opportunities, in peace and war, in refugee camps, women experience a variety of abuses which breed on one another and often go unpunished. A study conducted in 71 countries by the World Health Organization found that intimate partner violence involved 23 to 49 per cent of women in most sites surveyed. UNICEF reported that 130 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation. According to the United Nations Population Fund, 5,000 women die every year in “honour killings” perpetrated by family members. Rape and other sexual violence have been massively employed as instruments of war in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Comprehensive information on violence and abuse against women is hard to collect either because of the stigma attached to it and the fear of retribution, or because such violence is widely accepted as an ordinary and even inevitable occurrence, and thus deemed unworthy of action and remedy. Although rape, genital mutilation, spousal and domestic abuse, and certain traditional punishment, such as stoning and burning, are more likely to grab the occasional headline and provoke outrage, female infanticide, prenatal sex selection and systematic neglect of girls all too often remain under the radar screen of national and international authorities, as well as away from the media spotlight and the public’s attention.

Blatantly evident, however, is the fact that discrimination and poverty expose hundreds of millions of girls and women to collateral abuse. A concomitant denial of basic rights, such as access to health services, housing, education, and food and water, as well as to property ownership, overwhelmingly affects women, depriving them of the means and the tools they need to assert their equal rights.

Even globalization and migration, which may empower women with information, jobs and a measure of economic prowess, present alarming downsides. As the Secretary General noted, the social changes triggered by these phenomena “have tended to produce new forms or worsened existing forms of violence against women, including trafficking on a global scale.” They have also spun new forms of subordination, since women are likely to find employment in sex-segregated and low-wage industries. Undocumented migrant women are particularly vulnerable to abuse and have scant access to protection and redress.

The paradox is that most States—albeit with varying approaches and at different speeds—have largely accepted the international normative framework aimed at preventing, tackling and punishing discrimination and violence against women. Crucially, they recognize that women’s equality and entitlements are human rights, thus empowering women to become active right-holders and claimants, rather than passive beneficiaries of discretionary policies. From 1979 onwards, a web of instruments has grounded a system of protection in solid jurisprudence. Moreover, the Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda highlighted and confronted gender-based crimes during armed conflict.

Regrettably, the growing clarity provided by international law has not been matched in States’ implementation, policy and practice, particularly where it matters the most, that is, in the daily lives of women around the world. As a result, patriarchal rule, often bolstered by the pressure of cultural and religious lobbies or competition over employment, continues to hold sway in family and communal relationships.

Whether tactically motivated, or due to negligence or misguided understandings of priorities and values, a State’s abdication of responsibilities in upholding women’s human rights is unacceptable. Particularly objectionable is a failure to hold perpetrators of violence accountable.

There is nothing inevitable regarding violence against women and nothing to gain from turning a blind eye to such abuse. In contrast, ample evidence confirms that promoting and defending women’s human rights advances societies as a whole. What is required now is not just one day of reflection and more rhetorical pledges, but decisive leadership and a sustained commitment to put an end to abusive practices and discrimination that hold women back.