Statement by Ms Dubravka Šimonović, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences at the Regional Exchange of Good Practices: Challenges and New Struggles in Combatting Violence against Women

Conference on Protection of human rights of women and girls in the international Human Rights System

Pachuca, 26 July 2016

Your excellences, distinguished delegates,

I would like to start my intervention by thanking the Mexican Government for inviting me to participate in this regional conference on challenges and new strategies on combating violence against women. Allow me to thank the Inter-American Commission of Women of the Organization of the American States, the National Commission for the Prevention and Eradication of Violence against Women of Mexico and the Government of the State of Hidalgo for this opportunity to contribute to exchange good practices on combating and preventing violence against women and girls as Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences.

I took up function last year as UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women.  This is a comprehensive and independent mandate established in 1994, that cooperates with State authorities and other stakeholders, non-governmental organizations, independent institutions and academia by conducting country visits and producing reports with action-oriented recommendations to guide countries to prevent and combat violence against women, its causes and consequences.

So far, the mandate has conducted 53 official country visits, among which, 7 countries were from the Latin American region, including Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Cuba and Brazil. I would like to inform you that in November this year, I will be visiting Argentina.

Mexico was visited in 2006 by the then Special Rapporteur on violence against women Ms. Yakin Ertürk who elaborated and presented to the Human Rights Council a country report with a number of important recommendations. I would like to encourage the Government of Mexico to provide me with follow up information on the implementation of those recommendations and to offer my support for addressing remaining challenges.

Another task of this mandate is the elaboration of thematic reports on different substantive topics. Former Special Rapporteurs elaborated important reports on due diligence, on reparations and on other topics, while I have recently presented my vision setting report. Additional tools at the disposal of my mandate is the communications procedure in form of allegation  letters or urgent appeals on ongoing cases of violence against women and of course the attendance of different seminars and conferences like this one with the aim of  sharing good practices and supporting efforts and political will to combat violence against women.

As I have mentioned last month, in June I have presented my first report to the Human Rights Council, which is a vision-setting report. It examines the general context and main trends and challenges posed by violence against women.

In this general context I have addressed the need to replace a fragmented approach with a comprehensive and holistic approach to combat violence against women in implementing instruments at our disposal and to jointly use important global and regional instruments on violence against women in order to increase synergies between: namely the CEDAW/DEVAW/BPA/UNSCR 1325/ and regional instruments like the Convention of Belém do Pará with a focus on achieving results at the national level.

Here I would like to also mention the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda adopted last year. This Agenda, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, including the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women, has a real transformative potential. Goal n°5, and in particular its targets 5.1 on the elimination of all forms of discrimination and 5.2, on the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls in the public and private spheres.

I would like to share with you some of the priorities to which the mandate will be focusing. As an immediate priority, I intend to focus on the use of data on violence against women as a tool for its prevention.

Last year, on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, I called upon all States to establish a “femicide watch” or a “gender-related killing of women watch” and publish data on the number of femicides, disaggregated by age and ethnicity of victims, and the sex of the perpetrators, and very importantly indicating the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. Information concerning the prosecution and punishment of perpetrators should also be collected and published. Each case of femicide should be analyzed by national bodies established for this purpose in order to determine the shortcomings of national prevention systems, the lack of risk assessments and management, and consequent misidentification, concealment and underreporting of gender-related killings. This mechanism would provide crucial information related to such violence and will point out on effective measures and strategies needed to prevent femicides.

I also believe that such model of watch could be extended to other forms of violence against women, such as rape, sexual violence, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

In October this year, I will be presenting a report to the General Assembly on the modalities for the establishment of a femicide watch or gender-related killing of women watch or by entrusting current observatories on violence against women to undertake such task. With great interest I have studied and would like to emphasize the importance of the Latin American Model Protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women.  Following this Protocol, many countries in the region have modified their criminal code to include femicide or feminicide and have adopted other measures aimed at eliminating violence against women and ongoing impunity for such violence. I would like to call all those States that adopted those important legislative advances to consider establishing a femicide watch that would not only collect data but would through analyses of such cases focus on  prevention and improvement of the systems.

Another global initiative is the continuation of the examination of the current international legal framework on violence against women and its adequacy. I have invited global and regional human rights mechanisms that monitor the implementation of international and regional instruments on violence against women to send me their views and inputs on whether indeed there is a need for a new global convention on violence against women or whether there is an incorporation and implementation gap of the international or regional human rights norms and standards in national laws.

I am also collecting the views of all other interested stakeholders on this and trust that the collection and analysis of such information will enable all of us to take a well informed decision on the measures needed to accelerate the eradication of violence against women and girls.

Other thematic priorities I intend to take up during my tenure include:

• the protection of and services for women survivors of violence;
• the possibility of formulating a global code of conduct for police and security 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 enforcement officials dealing with violence against women,  specially judiciary;
• new challenges posed by online violence against women and lastly;
• the prevention and elimination of discriminatory laws and their negative impact in perpetuating or contributing to violence against women and
• violence against women in politics .

I thank you for your attention.