RIGHTS-WOMEN: Groups Campaign for End to Violence against Women

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 1998 (IPS) - The United Nations and world governments should celebrate the 50th anniversary this year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by enforcing policies and committing funds to ending violence against women, several rights groups contend.

Non-governmental organisations – ranging from human-rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) to national bodies like the U.S.-based Centre for Women’s Global Leadership and Kenya’s International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA-K) – want nations to live up to their commitments to combat gender-based violence.

Those groups are joining forces this year to push for a variety of reforms, including the increasing criminalisation of marital rape, training of police and armed forces to protect women’s human rights and improved asylum rights for women fleeing gender-based violence and genital mutilation.

In many cases, what the organisations want is for acts of violence specifically directed at women to be treated as seriously as any other kind of human rights violation. As Aldo Facio of the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice at the International Criminal Court put it, conventions to enhance women’s rights are “not only for protection from government and state abuse, but (for women) to know that they are humans, like men are humans.”

As activists and government officials meet here for a two-week session of the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW), many organisations are also hoping to push for more funding within the U.N. system of activities to discourage gender-based violence.

Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, urged the United Nations to set aside half of a billion-dollar gift to be donated over the next decade by U.S. media mogul Ted Turner for projects to further women’s human rights.

“Human rights depend on women’s rights,” she argued, adding that nobody could be safe as long as half the human race could be deprived of fundamental rights.

The United Nations can also do more to combat gender-based violations in many cases already under the jurisdiction of U.N. tribunals, such as the use of rape and sexual assault in the wars in Rwanda and Bosnia-Hercegovina, said Samya Burney of HRW’s women’s rights division.

So far, Burney said, the Rwanda tribunal has brought cases on charges of violations against women against only two suspects, while the Bosnia tribunal has seized only four out of 27 suspects indicted for sexual crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Even aside from war-based acts of violence, she charged, “routine acts of everyday violence against women are also ignored.”

In many cases, governments themselves must be taken to task for failing to defend women who try to defend their human rights, Bunch said – from threats by groups which bomb abortion clinics in the United States, or by men who throw acid at activist women in Bangladesh.

Sometimes, however, governments themselves are responsible for attacking women rights activists, said Sheila Dauer, an attorney for Amnesty International. Last July, she claimed, between 40 and 50 women who were peacefully protesting in the Indian village of Ghantagar were attacked without provocation and sexually assaulted by police – but no action has been taken against the police officers involved.

Governments have repeatedly emphasised their commitment to ending gender-based violence, most recently at the 1995 Women’s Conference at Beijing. Since 1979, 161 countries have also ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (also called the Women’s Convention), which includes the recommendation that “gender-based violence is a form of discrimination that seriously inhibits women’s ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men.”

However, few states have put their money – or their policies – where their mouths are. Atsango Chesoni, a Kenyan lawyer and member of FIDA-K, noted that her government “has ratified several human-rights instruments, yet we are not able to benefit from them,” because Nairobi has yet to incorporate those commitments into its domestic laws.

Many governments that signed on to the Women’s Convention have also done so with “reservations”, which often enable them to escape enforcement of its toughest obligations, Burney added. At the current session of the Commission on the Status of Women, many organisations are urging all governments to ratify the Convention by the year 2000, while eliminating any reservations they have.

“We don’t only want commitments – we want compliance with those commitments,” Facio asserted.

Women’s groups may face an uphill battle in winning support from all governments. The United States, for example, has yet to ratify the Women’s Convention, with some senators contending that it has failed to prevent discrimination against women effectively. But Bunch countered that the Senate is not worried that the Convention is too weak, but rather “they are afraid it might be an effective instrument.”

Amid the larger legal battles, governments present for the Commission’s two-week session are also focusing on particular cases of rights violations. The United States is winning support for its efforts to denounce Afghanistan’s record of discrimination against women, a member of the U.S. delegation here told IPS.

Sources say that South Korea is also considering bringing up at the present session the plight of the “comfort women” raped by Japanese troops during the Second World War.