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RIGHTS: Conference on Eradicating Violence Against Women
By Daniela Meier
BERLIN, Dec 17 (IPS) - Political framework conditions and laws alone do not
suffice to curb gender-specific violence. State and non-governmental
institutions and organisations must ratify and implement political
directives aimed at the prevention and punishment of violence against women
and the girl-child.
In this context, the strengthening of the role of so-called strategic
professions - medical doctors, health personnel, social workers and
educationists - constitutes a key to success, experts participating in an
international conference said. They also pleaded for strengthening the
police and the legal system.
However, this presupposes that the corresponding institutions, often
characterised by a male-dominated hierarchy, are willing to identify
themselves with the issue and integrate the new resulting demands into their
panoply of services and most importantly into their organisational culture.
The conference was organised Dec 2-4 in Berlin by the German Agency for
Technical Cooperation (GTZ) on 'Eradicating Violence Against Women and
Girls - Strengthening Human Rights'.
"Violence against women is an expression of masculinity," said James Lang
of the Oxfam, a Britain-based international NGO. Men or boys commit about 90
percent of all violent crimes. Women commit only about 10 percent of the
crimes, he said.
The overriding majority of violent acts committed by men are directed
against their own sex. About 20 percent affect women and girls, however,
mostly in the form of sexual, physical or psychological abuse within the
family.
The reason for the marked differences between the genders regarding
violent tendencies are role models and identities attributed to both sexes,
which have been learned, assimilated and are constantly reproduced.
The dominant masculine stereotypes in most societies are linked to power,
strength, domination and aggressiveness; the female ideal, on the contrary,
is associated with passivity, subordination and solicitude.
"This division of roles generally runs in tandem with a marked difference
in the power of each gender as regards economic resources, the authority to
make political decisions and mobility," said Lang.
Andrew Morrison of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) said there
were social costs of violence. This is because violence against women and
girls is not only a violation of basic human rights, but also a social
phenomenon with important consequences for the economy in general, he said.
According to Morrison, the consequences of gender-based violence
constitute a substantial drain on public resources. Costs result, for
example, from expenditure on goods and services required for the medical
treatment of victims and for legal and police proceedings against the
perpetrators.
Also, the drop in labour productivity of the abused women, that is, their
absence from the workplace, must be taken into account, as must that of the
perpetrators serving their prison sentence shut away from society.
Morrison said studies in the U.S., New Zealand, Britain, the Netherlands
and Switzerland have shown the social costs of gendered violence to amount
to billions.
A Canadian study dating from 1995 calculated the estimated measurable
costs of violence against women in terms of health-care sector and welfare
alone at 1.5 billion dollars a year.
A study commissioned by the government of New Zealand showed that
national expenditure for measures relating to violence against women
corresponds to the profit made from the main export product, wool.
The women concerned and their children also find their development
potential curtailed. Women who are exposed to violence have to grapple with
enormous psychological spin-off effects that impact negatively on their
ability to withstand stress and to function in a family and working context,
with total incapacitation often being the end result, said Morrison.
Nahid Toubia, founder-president of Rainbo, an international
not-for-profit organization working on issues within the intersection
between health and human rights of women, pleaded for looking at
gender-based violence from an inter-cultural perspective.
Violence is defined and legitimated differently according to the cultural
context, she said. Whereas, for instance, in many African societies the
genital mutilation of girls is regarded at the local level as an important
and positive ritual, the practice is defined internationally in the context
of human rights conventions as the mutilation of the female body and a grave
form of abuse; in many national legal systems, it is now a punishable
criminal offence.
The physical punishment of women is accepted to a certain degree in many
societies not only by male but also by female family members and goes
unpunished. Crimes of honour against women and girls perpetrated by their
family, for example in the case of an unmarried woman falling pregnant, are
even legitimated under traditional law in some Arab countries.
In different societies and social groups, gender-based violence takes on
very different forms, characteristics and dimensions. For example, at the
beginning of the 1990s, rape statistics in Australia were twenty times
higher than those in Japan.
Acid attacks and dowry crimes are forms of gender-specific violence which
occur frequently in some Asian countries. In some countries, girls are known
to be raped and sexually exploited as a so-called therapy against AIDS.
The most common forms of violence against women and girls in
industrialised countries are physical and sexual attacks within the family,
said Toubia.
Gender-based violence, she added, is more likely in societies in which
women have a lower social status and in which a marked difference exists in
the balance of power between genders violence is on the whole very
widespread and accepted economic and political changes, crisis, conflict and
post-conflict situations are to be found.
Participants included Monique Ilboudo, Burkina Faso's minister for the
promotion of human rights, and Mu Sochua, Cambodia's minister of women's and
veterans' affairs, and German government's commissioner for human rights,
Gerd Poppe.
In a background paper, the GTZ said experience in technical cooperation
shows how violence prevention and eradication can be integrated into new and
ongoing projects. These examples are cross-sectoral in nature and confirm
that starting points for action exist at all levels, and that in some cases
great impacts can be achieved with relatively low inputs.
They are guided by the following strategic considerations:
- Democracy and the rule of law are incomplete without a reduction in
violence against women.
- Violence against women must be eradicated if there is to be sustainable
poverty reduction.
- Strategies to reduce violence require cooperation with NGOs and local
alliances and networks.
- Violence prevention means improving the framework conditions for
non-violent actions.
A publication titled 'Stop violence against women and girls' gives
examples from the field of German technical cooperation.
(END/2002)
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