The struggle to end domestic violence needs to include a push to transform societal understanding of gender roles, and employers have a key role to play in this effort and, increasingly, an obligation to do so. Credit: Shutterstock

By Negar Mohtashami Khojasteh
MONTREAL, Canada, Nov 19 2024 (IPS)

In Indonesia’s humid heat, I watched as dozens of men on motorcycles lingered outside the garment factory gates, their children hanging off their shoulders, as they waited for their partners to finish their shift. These men – many without jobs of their own – came to pick up the women who provide for their families.

In Sukabumi – where the main employers are garment factories, and their workers are predominantly women – women are the backbone of the economy. And yet these women often face violence both at work and at home – and their employers can and should be doing much more to help.

While financial independence can be a protective factor against domestic violence, in societies where patriarchal attitudes prevail, women breadwinners disrupt the traditional household power dynamics and can face a backlash from their husbands, as men use violence to reassert control

“Almost all married women in my village are facing domestic violence,” one garment worker confided. Another said domestic violence is an open secret in her village, a harsh reality of being a married woman and a breadwinner.

Human Rights Watch has documented horrifying human rights violations suffered by women working in garment factories across Asian countries, where low wages, grueling working hours, unsafe working conditions, and verbal abuse and harassment are often rampant and workplace sexual harassment of women workers all too common.

Yet when these women go home, many also face another form of abuse: domestic violence, driven in part by resentment over how they are perceived to have subverted gender roles by becoming breadwinners.

This pattern is not unique to Indonesia or women garment workers. In Bangladesh, studies have shown a correlation between women working and their experiencing domestic violence, notably among women who married young or have lower levels of education.

A study across multiple countries in Africa found that employment for women “is positively correlated with the probability of being abused” in the home. In Australia, new research has shown that women who earn more than their male partners are 33 percent more likely to experience domestic violence.

While financial independence can be a protective factor against domestic violence, in societies where patriarchal attitudes prevail, women breadwinners disrupt the traditional household power dynamics and can face a backlash from their husbands, as men use violence to reassert control.

This violence can manifest itself in the form of controlling the woman’s income, physical beatings and sexual violence, and psychological and verbal abuse.

The struggle to end domestic violence needs to include a push to transform societal understanding of gender roles, and employers have a key role to play in this effort and, increasingly, an obligation to do so.

After many years of campaigning by activists and labor movements, and as the #MeToo movement was growing, the International Labor Organization adopted a new Convention on Violence and Harassment (C190) in 2019, which includes requirements for employers to mitigate the harm of domestic violence. While Indonesia and Bangladesh have yet to ratify it, 45 countries have already ratified the convention, and the number is steadily growing.

As employers, especially in industries where women hold many of the jobs, implement internal policies to combat gender-based violence and harassment at work, they also need to recognize their important role in assisting workers who are experiencing domestic violence.

It is not a separate issue, and the effects of domestic violence are not restricted to the home. Domestic violence affects the well-being of employees, affecting their health, safety, and long-term performance at work. In some cases, it literally follows them to work.

During my research, I interviewed witnesses who told me they saw a woman physically assaulted by her husband just outside the garment factory before starting her shift. By acknowledging this connection, employers can take meaningful steps to protect their workforce from all forms of violence, creating a safer environment for women both in and outside of work.

Researchers have documented a connection between a woman’s bargaining power in the home and her safety. Employers can play a vital role in helping women protect themselves by offering a supportive environment at work that provides concrete assistance.

Measures outlined in the International Labour Organization’s Violence and Harassment Convention Recommendation 206 like flexible work arrangements, paid leave for domestic violence survivors, and temporary protection against dismissal can serve as a critical lifeline, empowering women with an option to leave abusive situations. In this way, employers not only increase women’s bargaining power but also actively contribute to a pathway out of violence.

Domestic violence is not a private issue, contrary to some views. Under the ILO convention, employers have a responsibility to help. This is an enormously important duty; how an employer responds to a situation where one of their workers is experiencing domestic violence can have life and death consequences.

Excerpt:

Gladys Acosta, a Peruvian lawyer and sociologist who is the chair of the CEDAW Committee, considered the fundamental charter of women's rights in the world, stands on a stretch of the Costa Verde boardwalk in Lima after her interview with IPS. The Convention celebrated its 40th anniversary in September 2021. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Dec 10 2021 (IPS)

“The level of injustice in the world cannot go on like this…I am not pessimistic about the future,” said Gladys Acosta, president of the CEDAW Committee, in an interview with IPS in the Peruvian capital.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) celebrated its 40th anniversary in September of this year as the binding legal tool for women’s rights for all 189 states parties.

Acosta, a Peruvian feminist lawyer and sociologist, chairs the Committee of 23 independent experts with four-year mandates to monitor the implementation of the Convention.

After an intense period of sessions, Acosta is in Lima and will return in 2022 to her duties in Geneva, where the Committee operates, to finish her term. Until then, she will enjoy her view of the Pacific Ocean and the soothing murmur of the waves for a few weeks.

After stating that she is not pessimistic about the future, she adds that, on the contrary, “I am very critical and pessimistic about what is happening today.”

“We are reaching the limit of an era that is in its death throes because the level of injustice in the world cannot go on like this,” said the expert, who has previously held senior regional positions in United Nations agencies.

Among the issues addressed in her conversation with IPS, Acosta mentioned the importance of analyzing gender-based violence as part of the systemic discrimination against women, and said the pandemic is marking a before and after not only in relation to this problem, but also a change of era where the question of caring for people becomes much more of a priority.

IPS: Do you consider that the covid-19 pandemic marks a before and after in relation to discrimination against women, a step backwards in terms of achievements? Is it possible to make this interpretation?

GLADYS ACOSTA: I think that this will be the case for everything, not just for women, discrimination or human rights; I dare to think that it will be seen as a change of era. We are coming from an era with the greatest concentration of wealth in the history of the world, with a population in growing poverty, which is reaching unsustainable levels.

It is very important to develop this awareness, because we have been sold the idea that having money or buying goods is the non plus ultra of everything. We are in a post-neoliberal world and nobody knows for sure how far we have come, but we are at a breaking point because this economy based on the exploitation of territories, of people, of knowledge is a constant illicit appropriation of everything, and today with the pandemic it has come to light that human beings need care.

This has become a central focus and has been put on the agenda; the pandemic has clearly demonstrated that the presence of this virus has been exacerbated in the absence of care.

(Acosta vehemently recalled that many years ago feminist economics proposed that the economic system could not live without women’s work, especially unpaid work. And she called for an analysis of the current situation with fresh eyes and making better connections in order to, for example, “stop looking at the growing problem of violence against women as something dislocated, a loose wheel”.)

When we in the Committee took a position regarding Nov. 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women), we saw that three forms of violence have been exacerbated: femicides, domestic violence and violence online, which has become widespread.

So, yes, there are some new things, but it is very clear that we have not resolved the basic forms of discrimination that are at the basis of society, which include social, political, economic, racial and cultural violence – and in places where there are castes: caste-based violence. There is a discriminatory base that is at its peak and I think it is a serious moment of very unequal and very unjust power relations that I view with great concern.

IPS: At the moment you describe, there is resistance put up by different population groups – young people, feminists, indigenous people – but it is difficult to bring them together in a concerted effort, as seen in Peru and other Latin American countries. Is this a great challenge?

GA: We are living in a highly conflictive time, it is not that we are being swept away by a right wing with no resistance. No. We are in a time of open conflict between political sectors, economic sectors, social sectors and there is a very clear resistance. And I am thinking on a global level, more globally as part of the Committee, not only with regard to what is happening in Peru. The environmental crises are very serious and covid has to do with that.

This is not an epidemic that can be seen as detached from human aggression against nature. Environmental crises accelerated in the twentieth century due to the model of industrialization, production and economic development. Now they are trying to reverse the situation, but global agreements are not easy and do not bear the desired fruits quickly because there are enormous economic interests involved.

Interests that are prepared to kill the planet! They say: “What does it matter, in thirty years we won’t be here.” Just like that, with an atrocious pragmatism. And within these environmental conflicts, we women bear the brunt.

Secondly, there is the social conflict that takes place within and outside these circumstances. And there is an atmosphere of conflict, I would say violent, armed, in different parts of the world and it has to do with this madness of arms production, because this is a war-economic model that produces and sells arms left and right.

And the big countries, even those that seem very democratic and progressive – and I say this because I see it in the Committee – are big producers of arms and sell them to countries that have conflicts and this has repercussions on women’s lives.

(Acosta explained that the Committee would address this problem with arms-producing nations and expects the resistance movement to grow. “The problem I find is that this perversity in the economy is unfortunately linked to a dominance in mass media and with a top-level technology. And I think that these elements, which are more macro, have to be included in the analysis of women’s issues”.)

Gladys Acosta sits on Lima’s malecon or boardwalk after an intense year as chair of the CEDAW Committee, made up of 23 independent experts who monitor compliance with the Convention against all forms of discrimination against women. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

IPS: Ecofeminists warn of the risk to the sustainability of life, indigenous peoples warn of the threat to nature as long as there are weak or complicit States. How does the Committee contribute to this reflection?

GA: First of all, States still exist. Although the economic power of transnational corporations is enormous, this is the sphere in which we move, we discuss with the States Parties, of which there are 189 in this Convention, in an interesting dynamic of pressure to respect international human rights standards, among which international standards for the protection of women’s rights are very important.

Women’s rights have an enormous connection with the sustainability of life, but not from an essentialist point of view. You brought up the issue of indigenous peoples and it seems to me that in many ways we are discussing a general recommendation on the rights of indigenous women and girls. There is an ancestral indigenous wisdom, especially that of women, which must be protected in a more effective sense.

There is an enormous knowledge about nature, food, seeds and seed reproduction; knowledge about how nature is suffering – they know the symptoms of this suffering and how we could do things differently. It is knowledge that has been handed down through the generations and that fortunately still exists and must be protected.

IPS: In another interview with IPS, in 2009, when you were regional representative of the predecessor organization of UN Women, you said that policies should not see women as a vulnerable sector; do you think there has been progress against that vision described as paternalistic?

GA: I would say there are both. It seems to me that the mobilization today in the world in favor of women’s rights is much more powerful, broader and more political. I think that in different countries you find everything, equality policies that have been very positive and that have opened the way for greater respect of women’s rights and greater access to education, university and work.

I would even say that the issue of parity has advanced despite the fact that something that worries me is also appearing, which is that some very retrograde sectors are taking advantage of the issue and want to make it their own when in reality the only thing they are looking for is more power for themselves. Women end up being nothing more than decorative elements within their political stance.

(Acosta highlighted in this context the emergence of younger movements, of young people who demand more power, and who have more vision about which direction to take than adults and older people, and said she had confidence in these movements, while clarifying that she meant the ones that take a “critical stance”.)

That is why I am not pessimistic about the future. I am very critical and pessimistic about what is happening today, but I do not think that this will remain the same. That is why I say that we are reaching the limit of an era that is in its death throes because the level of injustice in the world cannot go on like this.

This is going to explode and hopefully the damage to people will be minimal. But I know that the level of conflict will not remain unchanged.

Excerpt:

Girls' sexual and reproductive rights activist Mía Calderón stands on San Martín Avenue in San Juan de Lurigancho, the most populous municipality of Peru's capital. She complained that the pandemic once again highlighted the fact that sexual violence against girls comes mainly from someone close to home and that the girls are often not believed. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Oct 22 2021 (IPS)

“During the pandemic, sexual violence against girls has grown because they have been confined with their abusers. If the home is not a safe place for them, what is then, the streets?” Mía Calderón, a young activist for sexual and reproductive rights in the capital of Peru, remarks with indignation.

The 19-year-old university student, whose audiovisual communications studies have been interrupted due to the restrictions set in place to curb the covid-19 pandemic, is an activist who belongs to the youth collective Vayamos in San Juan de Lurigancho, the district of Lima where she lives.

Located to the northeast of the capital, it is a district of valleys and highlands areas higher than 2200 metres above sea level, where water is a scarce commodity and is supplied by tanker trucks. San Juan de Lurigancho was created 54 years ago and its population of 1,117,629 inhabitants, according to official figures, is mostly made up of families who have come to the capital from the country’s hinterland.

Lima’s 43 districts are home to a total of 9.7 million people, and San Juan de Lurigancho has by far the largest population.

In an interview with IPS during a walk through the streets of her district, Calderón said she helped one of her friends during the mandatory social isolation decreed in this Andean nation between March and July 2020, which has been followed by further restrictions on mobility at times of new covid-19 outbreaks.

Since then, classrooms have been closed and education has continued virtually from home, where girls spend most of their time.

“She was in lockdown with her two sisters, her mother and stepfather. But she left before her stepfather could rape her; the harassment had become unbearable. Now she is very afraid of what might happen to her little sisters because he’s still living at home,” she said.

But not all girls and adolescents at risk of sexual abuse have support networks to rely on.

An intersection with hardly any passers-by in San Juan de Lurigancho, one of the 43 districts of the Peruvian capital. There are now fewer children on the streets because schools have been closed since the beginning of the covid pandemic and they receive their education virtually. This keeps them safe from violence in public spaces, but increases the abuse they suffer at home. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Data that exposes the violence

Official statistics reveal a devastating reality: Between early 2020 and August of this year there have been 1763 births to girls under 14 years of age, according to the Health Ministry’s birth registration system (CNV).

All of these pregnancies and births are considered to be the result of rape, as the concept of sexual consent does not apply to girls under 14, who are protected by Peruvian law.

Looking at CNV figures from 2018 to August 2021, the total number increases to 4483, which would mean that on average five girls under the age of 14 give birth in Peru every day.

This is also the conclusion reached by the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights (Cladem), which in September completed a nationwide study on forced child pregnancy in Peru, published on Tuesday, Oct. 19.

For Cladem, forced child pregnancy is any pregnancy of a minor under 14 years of age resulting from rape, who was not guaranteed access to therapeutic abortion, which in the case of Peru is the only form of legal termination of pregnancy.

“These figures are unacceptable, but we know they may be even worse because of underreporting,” Lizbeth Guillén, who until August was the Peruvian coordinator of this Latin American network whose regional headquarters are in Lima, told IPS by telephone.

The activist headed up the project “Monitoring and advocacy for the prevention, care and punishment of forced child pregnancy” which was funded by the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women between 2018 and August 2021.

An aggravating factor for at risk girls and adolescents was that during the months of lockdown, public services for addressing violence against women were suspended and the only thing available was toll-free telephone numbers, which made it more difficult for victims to file complaints.

“What we have experienced shows us once again that homes are the riskiest places for girls,” said Guillén.

The Cladem study also reveals that the number of births to girls under 10 years of age practically tripled, climbing from nine cases in 2019 to 24 in 2020. And the situation remains worrisome, as seven cases had already been documented this year as of August.

Julia Vargas, 61, works in the municipality of Villa El Salvador, south of Lima, where she has lived since the age of 11 and where she maintains her vocation of service as a health promoter. Through this work she knows first-hand about sexual violence against girls and adolescents, which she says has worsened during the pandemic since they have been confined to their homes with their potential abusers. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

One district’s experience

“Sexual violence against girls has been indescribable during this period, worse than covid-19 itself. Men have been taking advantage of their daughters, they think they have authority over them,” said Julia Vargas, a local resident of Villa El Salvador.

This municipality, which emerged as a self-managed experience five decades ago to the south of the capital, offers health promotion as part of its public services to the community.

Vargas, a 61-year-old mother of four grown children, is proud to be a health promoter, for which she has received training from the Health Ministry and from non-governmental organisations such as the Flora Tristán Peruvian Women’s Centre.

“It’s hard to conceive of so much violence against girls,” she told IPS indignantly at a meeting in her district, “and the worst thing is that many times the mothers turn a blind eye; they say if he (their partner) leaves, who is going to support me.”

Studies indicate that women’s economic dependence is a factor that prevents them from exercising autonomy and reinforces unequal power relations that sustain gender-based violence.

Vargas continued: “There was a case of a father who got his three daughters pregnant and made them have clandestine abortions, and do you think the justice system did anything? Nothing! It said there was consent, how can a young girl give consent?!”

“Girls can’t be mistreated this way, they have rights,” she said.

Mía Calderón, a 19-year-old youth activist with the Vayamos collective, demands more and better measures in Peru to defend girls from sexual violence, fueled by the closure of schools since the beginning of the pandemic, which keeps them isolated and in homes where they sometimes live with their abusers. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The culprit nearby

Calderón is also familiar with this situation. “The pandemic has highlighted the fact that sexual violence comes mainly from someone close to home and that many times the girls are not believed: ‘you provoked your uncle, your stepfather’, they are told by their families, instead of focusing on the abuser,” she said.

Her collective Vayamos works to help girls have the right to enjoy every stage of their lives. Due to the pandemic, the group had to restrict its face-to-face activities, but as a counterbalance, it increased the publication of content on social networks.

“No girl or adolescent should live in fear of sexual violence or should face any such risk,” she said.

However, Cladem’s research indicates that between 2018 and 2020, there were 12,677 complaints of sexual violence against girls under 14 in the country, the cause of many forced pregnancies.

But official statistics do not differentiate between child and adolescent pregnancy.

The 2019 National Health Survey reported that of the female population between 15 and 19 years of age, 12.6 percent had been pregnant or were already mothers. The percentage in rural areas was higher than the national rate: 22.7 percent.

Youth activist Mia Calderón, health promoter Julia Vargas and Cladem member Lizbeth Guillén all agree on the proposal to decriminalise abortion in cases of rape and on the need for timely delivery of emergency kits by public health services to prevent forced pregnancies and maternity.

These kits contain emergency contraceptive pills, HIV and hepatitis tests, among other components for comprehensive health protection for victims.

“There are regulatory advances such as this joint action protocol between the Ministry of Women and the Health Ministry for a girl victim of violence to access the emergency kit, but in practice it is not complied with due to the personal conceptions of some operators and they deprive the victims of this right,” explained Guillén.

She stressed that in order to overcome the weak response of the State to such a serious problem, it is also necessary to adequately implement existing regulations, guarantee access to therapeutic abortion for girls and adapt prevention strategies, since the danger often lies directly in the home.

Susana Gómez, who was left blind by a beating from her then husband, says in a park in the city of La Plata, Argentina that she did not find support from the authorities to free herself from domestic violence, but a social organisation saved her from joining the list of femicides in Latin America - gender-based murders of women, which numbered 2,795 in 2017 in the region. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
LA PLATA, Argentina, Dec 1 2018 (IPS)

Left blind by a beating from her ex-husband, Susana Gómez barely managed to avoid joining the list of nearly 2,800 femicides committed annually in Latin America, but her case shows why public policies and laws are far from curtailing gender-based violence in the region.

“I filed many legal complaints (13 in criminal courts and five in civil courts) and the justice system never paid any attention to me,” Gómez told IPS in an interview in a square in her neighborhood in Lisandro Olmos, a suburb of La Plata, capital of the province of Buenos Aires.

Although they already existed in Argentina in 2011, when the brutal attack against her took place, the specialised women’s police stations were not enough to protect her from her attacker.

Her life was saved by La Casa María Pueblo, a non-governmental organisation that, like others in Latin America, uses its own resources to make up for the shortcomings of the state in order to protect and provide legal advice to the victims of domestic violence.

Gómez, her four children and her mother, who were also threatened by her ex-husband, were given shelter by the NGO.

“We had nothing. We went there with the clothes on our back and our identity documents and nothing else because we were going here and there and everyone closed the door on us: The police didn’t do anything, nor did the prosecutor’s office,” said Gómez, who is now 34 years old.

“Without organisations like this one I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale, the case wouldn’t have made it to trial. Without legal backing, a shelter where you can hide, psychological treatment, I couldn’t have faced this, because it’s not easy,” she said.

In April 2014, a court in La Plata sentenced her ex-husband, Carlos Goncharuk, to eight years in prison. Gómez is now suing the government of the province of Buenos Aires for reparations.

“No one is going to give me my eyesight back, but I want the justice system, the State to be more aware, to prevent a before and an after,” said Gómez, who once again is worried because her ex will be released next year.

Lawyer Darío Witt, the founder of the NGO, said Gómez was not left blind by an accident or illness but by the repeated beatings at the hands of her then-husband. The last time, he banged her head against the kitchen wall.

“The aim of the reparations is not simply economic. What we want to try to show in the case of Susana and other victims is that the State, that the authorities in general, whether provincial, municipal or national and in different countries, have a high level of responsibility in this. The state is not innocent in these questions,” Witt told IPS.

“When I went blind and realised that I would no longer see my children, I said ‘enough’,” Gómez said.

Alarming statistics

According to the Gender Equality Observatory (OIG) of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), at least 2,795 women were murdered in 2017 for gender-based reasons in 23 countries in the region, crimes classified in several countries as femicides.

The list of femicides released this month by OIG is led by Brazil (1,133 victims registered in 2017), in absolute figures, but in relative terms, the rate of gender crimes per 100,000 women, El Salvador reaches a level unparalleled in the region, with 10.2 femicides per 100,000 women.

Charts showing absolute numbers of femicides by country in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the rate of gender-based murders per 100,000 women. Credit: ECLAC Gender Equality Observatory

Honduras (in 2016) recorded 5.8 femicides per 100,000 women, and Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia also recorded high rates in 2017, equal to or greater than two cases per 100,000 women.

The OIG details that gender-based killings account for the majority of murders of women in the region, where femicides are mainly committed by partners or ex-partners of the victim, with the exception of El Salvador and Honduras.

“Femicides are the most extreme expression of violence against women. Neither the classification of the crime nor its statistical visibility have been sufficient to eradicate this scourge that alarms and horrifies us every day,” said ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena as she released the new OIG figures.

Ana Silvia Monzón, a Guatemalan sociologist with the Gender and Feminism Studies Programme at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso), pointed out that her country has had a Law against Femicide and other Forms of Violence against Women since 2008 and a year later a Law against Sexual Violence, Exploitation and Trafficking in Persons.

“Both are important instruments because they help make visible a serious problem in Guatemala, and they are a tool for victims to begin the path to justice,” she told IPS from Guatemala City.

However, despite these laws that provided for the creation of a model of comprehensive care for victims and specialised courts, “the necessary resources are not allocated to institutions, agencies and programmes that should promote such prevention, much less specialised care for victims who report the violence,” she said.

In addition, “prejudices and biased gender practices persist among those who enforce the law” and “little has been done to introduce educational content or programmes that contribute to changing the social imaginary that assumes violence against women as normal,” and especially against indigenous women, she said.

#NiUnaMenos, #NiUnaMás

In the region, “significant progress has been made, which is the expression of a women’s movement that has managed to draw attention to gender-based violence as a social problem, but not enough progress has been made,” Monzón said.

Five-year-old Olivia holds up a sign with the slogan against femicide, #NiUnaMenos (Not One Woman Less), which has spread throughout Latin America in mass mobilisations against gender violence. Olivia participated in a neighborhood activity in the Argentine city of La Plata on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, celebrated Nov. 25. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

According to U.N. Women, a total of 18 Latin American and Caribbean nations have modified their laws to punish sexist crimes against women such as femicide or gender-based aggravated homicide.

But as Gómez and other social activists in her neighborhood conclude, much more must be done.

The meeting with the victim took place on Nov. 25, during an informal social gathering in the Juan Manuel de Rosas square, organized by the group Nuevo Encuentro.

The activity was held on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which launched the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence. This year’s slogan is #HearMeToo, which calls for victims to be heard as part of the solution to what experts call a “silent genocide.”

María Eugenia Cruz, a neighborhood organiser for Nuevo Encuentro, said that despite the new legal frameworks and mass demonstrations and mobilisations such as #NiUnaMenos against machista violence and feminicide, which have spread throughout Argentina and other countries in the region, “there is still a need to talk about what is happening to women.”

“In more narrow-minded places like this neighbourhood, it seems like gender violence is something people are ashamed of talking about, the women feel guilty. Making the problem visible is part of thinking about what tools the State can provide,” she told IPS.

“Or to see what those tools are,” said Olivia, her five-year-old daughter who was playing nearby, and who proudly held a sign that read: “Ni Una Menos,” (Not One Woman Less) the slogan that has brought Latin American women together, as well as #NiUnaMás (Not One More Woman).

She exemplifies a new generation of Latin American girls who, thanks to massive mobilisations and growing social awareness, are beginning to speak out early and promote cultural change.

“Today women are becoming aware, starting during the dating stage, of the signs of a violent man. He doesn’t like your friends, he doesn’t like the way you dress. Now there’s more information available, and that’s important,” said Gómez, who is a volunteer on a hot-line for victims of violence.

“Now they call you, they ask you for advice, and that’s good. In the past, who could you call? Besides the fear, if they promise to conceal your identity, that prompts you to say: I’m going to file a complaint and I have a group of people who are going to help me,” said the survivor of domestic abuse.

Excerpt:

Poor women from the Andes highlands queuing up for aid in a village in Peru's Puno region. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Andrea Vale
LIMA, Aug 4 2017 (IPS)

Domestic violence is alarmingly prevalent in Peru. Not only is it statistically more common than in other, more progressive cultures, but Peruvian women tend to accept it as simply a ‘part of marriage.’

It was therefore both surprising and understandable that the domestic violence classes at a women’s center in the Cajamarca region, observed throughout the summer of 2016, were always crowded and bustling, teeming with adult women and teenage girls."Whenever he sees her with someone, that’s when he starts to get angry. And that’s when he hits her." --Cecilia

“A lot of women don’t speak out against domestic violence because they aren’t as educated, they don’t know about it as much,” one woman called out during class one afternoon. Her fellow classmates all nodded. “Their husbands will insult them and hit them, and the women believe that it’s their fault, that they deserve that kind of treatment.”

One of the class attendees, Cecilia, was reluctant to speak after initially offering to do so, instead staring down at her skirt while her friend sitting next to her, Yolanda, asked, “Are you ready to talk about it?” To which Cecilia quietly replied, “No.”

(Surnames have been omitted to ensure confidentiality.)

When asked if she or anyone she knew has had experience with domestic violence, Yolanda’s eyes immediately darted to Cecilia.

“Many of my friends have experience with it,” she said in Spanish.

When asked if she thinks that some women don’t object to being subjected to domestic violence because they think it’s simply a part of marriage, or a part of the larger culture, Yolanda whispered to Cecilia, “Come on, tell them, tell them.” Cecilia, however, did not answer.

In many Peruvian families, men’s education takes priority over that of women. According to a report by the United Nations, only 56.3% of women in Peru have received at least some secondary education, as compared to 66.1% of men. According to UNESCO, only 6.3% of adult males in Peru are illiterate – as compared to 17.5% of females.

As with almost any aspect of society, education makes a huge difference, but especially so when it comes to domestic violence. According to a study carried out by Princeton University, the less education you have, the higher your chances of being domestically abused are: 42.04% of women with no education at all, and 42.80% of those with primary school education had been abused – compared to 28.93% of those with tertiary, college or more.

“Mothers teach their boys to not do women’s work, that they don’t cook and clean and that’s the woman’s job,” another woman chimed in during class one afternoon, “If the women doesn’t cook and do women’s chores, then they’ll be abused. They won’t be able to get out of it because they don’t have any education, they don’t have any resources.”

All of the women in the class fell into one of two camps. Some wore jeans and tank tops. Others wore traditional long skirts, button down shirts and cardigans. Some were timid – some were not. The ones who spoke openly, condemning Machismo Culture and lecturing the others on the importance of marrying your best friend, were wearing leggings. The ones with waist-length braids and farming boots stayed quiet.

Contributing to that Machismo Culture is the reality that Peru is a sometimes vision-bending fusion of the Old existing alongside the New. While many in Peru drive cars, have cell phones and wear modern clothing, the simultaneous perseverance of a rural lifestyle that feels like going back in time offers fertile soil for that outdated, patriarchal society to take root in.

Consequently, domestic violence is more prevalent among rural women, as is their willingness to put up with it.

“It’s even worse in the rural areas. There, women are just expected to stay in their homes and that’s it,” Yolanda said. “The women from out in the country are quiet. They don’t talk, they don’t say anything. They were raised in that home. Their father hits their mother, and when they get married they get hit. They see it as normal.”

According to the Pan American Health Organization, physical violence within domestic abuse – as opposed to emotional, sexual or verbal violence – is “used much more frequently on women with fewer economic resources” in Peru.

According to the World Health Organization, the lifetime prevalence of physical violence by an intimate partner is 50% in urban areas of the country, as opposed to 62% in rural areas. And there, more than other countries, domestic violence often becomes fatal.

According to the Peruvian publication La Republica, there have been 356 feminicidios, or ‘women-icides’ in the country within the last 4 years, with an additional 174 attempted feminicidios. What’s more, judges have been markedly lenient in their punishments for perpetrators, with almost half receiving less than 15 years in prison, and two receiving less than seven – that is, if they end up being convicted, which only 84 were.

After staring over periodically at Yolanda while she spoke, and visibly reacting to one of Yolanda’s answers, Cecilia became willing to speak. When asked if she knew any stories of domestic violence, she stared down into her lap for a long silence, then nodded.

“Yes. I could tell you a story,” she said.

She proceeded to describe in detail the situation of a ‘relative’ who happened to be the same age as herself – twenty-nine.

“She got engaged to this man … He is always telling her that he loves her, and that he wants her, all the time right?” Cecilia said. “And always saying how much he loves her, and how he’s willing to give her everything, right? But in reality, I can see that it is not good.

“When he tells her that he needs her, she’ll go and be with him. But she is alone. He says that he loves her so much, and that’s why he doesn’t want her to work. He says she should only dedicate herself to her child. She has a daughter, and because of that she can’t work.

“Every instant the phone rings to call her, he asks, ‘Where are you? What are you doing? Who are you with?’ And he’ll find her.”

She finished, “He forces her to stay with him. She tries to leave, but he’s there always, always behind her, listening and waiting for her. Whenever he sees her with someone, that’s when he starts to get angry. And that’s when he hits her. She has tried to get out, but he’s forcing her. Because right now she lives more in fear, out of fear that he’s going to kill her if she were to have another partner.”

Cecilia’s hesitancy to speak – whether or not she actually was talking about a “relative” – says leagues about her situation, and that of all the women facing the Machismo Culture in Peru. It’s difficult to grapple with an issue that is in many ways tied into the larger economic, political and historical storylines that have resulted in the perseverance of a rural, anachronistic culture.

The education they are receiving at classes like the one taught at the women’s center is a necessary start – but only if paired with empowerment, so that women like Cecilia can know that they don’t have to be afraid to tell their stories.

A group of black women take part in Black Awareness Day celebrated on Nov. 20 in the city of São Paulo. Gender-related violence has increased, in particular among women of African descent in Brazil, despite the passage of better laws. Credit: Rovena Rosa/ Agência Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 24 2016 (IPS)

Four months in hospital and a number of operations saved the life of Maria da Penha Fernandes of Brazil, but the rifle shot left her paraplegic at the age of 37. When she returned home, her husband tried to electrocute her in the bathroom.

It eventually became clear that the author of the first attack, the shot in the back while she was sleeping one night in May 1983, had also been her husband, who claimed four thieves had broken in, tied him up, and shot her.

She left the family home protected by a court order that gave her custody over the couple’s three daughters, and launched, from her wheelchair, a 19-year battle in court to bring him to justice for the two murder attempts.“The Maria da Penha Law stipulates that first you have to file a complaint with the police, in order for it to reach the judicial authorities, and we know that the police don’t protect black women. The obstacle is racism, and if this is not recognised public policies will not be adjusted to meet the needs of black women. We have to face racism, train civil servants, police as well as administrators, to treat us as human beings.” -- Jurema Werneck

After his lawyers managed to overturn two convictions in Brazilian courts, she turned in the 1990s to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which in 2001 held the government of Brazil accountable for judicial tolerance of domestic violence in the case and recommended that it adopt more effective measures to combat violence against women.

Finally in 2002, the attempted murderer was sentenced to 10 years in prison. But he managed to walk free after just two years.

The main accomplishment of Da Penha, a bio-pharmacist in Fortaleza, capital of the northeast Brazilian state of Ceará, was to inspire a law that was named after her, adopted by the national Congress in 2006, against domestic violence.

However, gender-related murders continued to increase in Brazil, though at a slower rate.

From 1980 to 2006 the number of murdered women grew 7.6 per cent annually, while from 2006 to 2013 the rate dropped to 2.6 per cent, according to the Violence Map, produced by Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, Latin American Social Sciences Institute (Flacso) coordinator of studies on violence in Brazil.

The Maria da Penha law, special police units for women and other instruments “are effective against violence, but the resources are insufficient,” Clair Castilhos Coelho, executive secretary of the National Feminist Network of Health, Sexual and Reproductive Rights, told IPS.

But there is an important reality in this Latin American country of 205 million people: results differ depending on skin colour.

“For black women the situation has worsened,” Dr. Jurema Werneck, one of the coordinators of Criola, an NGO that promotes the rights of black women, told IPS.

In 10 years gender-based murders of black women increased 54.2 per cent, reaching 2,875 in 2013, while murders of white women dropped 9.8 per cent, from 1,747 in 2003 to 1,576 in 2013, according to the Violence Map.

“Racism lies beneath this contrast. Mechanisms to combat violence do not protect the life of everyone in the same way,” said Werneck.

“The Maria da Penha Law stipulates that first you have to file a complaint with the police, in order for it to reach the judicial authorities, and we know that the police don’t protect black women,” she added.

“The obstacle is racism, and if this is not recognised public policies will not be adjusted to meet the needs of black women. We have to face racism, train civil servants, police as well as administrators, to treat us as human beings,” she said.

Demonstrators call for full enforcement of the Maria da Penha Law against domestic violence in Brazil, 10 years after it was passed. One of the signs reads: ”When you remain silent, violence speaks louder.” Credit: Tony Winston/ Agência Brasília

A more effective application of the Maria da Penha Law would be to take the complaints directly to the offices of the public prosecutor and the ombudsperson, which would require a larger number of public prosecutors and public defenders rather than more police officers, said Werneck, who pointed out that this is already being done in some neighborhoods in the southern city of São Paulo.

It is also necessary to combat “institutionalised racism”, which permeates many law enforcement bodies, for example, and “to work together with society to value black women,” who have historically been marginalised in Brazil, she said.

Another accomplishment by women was the adoption in March 2015 of a law that establishes stricter sentences for femicide, defined as the murder of a woman due to gender-related motives.

Brazil thus became the 16th country in Latin America to adopt a law against femicide. According to the Violence Map, Brazil ranks 7th in the world with respect to the number of femicides: official figures indicated in 2015 that 15 women a day were the victims of gender-related killings.

However, violence against women includes other forms of aggression that affect the female population in their daily lives.

Nov. 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, kicks off 16 days of activism.

In Brazil, murders of men and boys represent 92 per cent of a total that is reaching 60,000 murders a year, a figure that only compares to the numbers seen in war-stricken areas.

But with regard to specific kinds of violence, such as physical, psychological and economic abuse, rape and abandonment, women tend to represent a majority of victims.

In 2014, a total of 147,691 women who had suffered some kind of violence were treated in Brazil’s Unified Health System, two times the number of men. That meant 405 women a day needed medical care because they were victims of violence.

The last National Health Survey, which is carried out by the Ministry of Health and the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute every five years, found that 2.4 million women were victims of physical aggression at the hands of someone that they knew, against 1.3 million men.

With regard to rape, the Brazilian Public Security Forum’s Annual Report registered 47,646 cases in Brazil, 6.7 per cent fewer than in the previous year. But the drop, which is based on documented cases, does not reflect a trend because experts believe that at least two-thirds, or up to 90 per cent of cases, go unreported.

”Violence against women may be increasing due to the new stronger role of women, who in the past were submissive in their homes and were used to suffering in silence. But with the old patterns broken, with women achieving rights, working, voting and reporting abuse, the oppressors respond with more violence,” said Castilhos.

There is also an increase in complaints as a result of gains achieved, such as the Maria da Penha and femicide laws and regulations that make reporting cases of abuse obligatory in the public health system, she said.

In her opinion, ”the greatest violence against a woman in the last few years in Brazil was the removal of former president Dilma Rousseff (Jan. 1, 2011 – Aug. 31, 2016), who had committed no proven crime to justify it, by a parliament where the majority of its members are accused of electoral crimes and corruption.”

The political environment generated by the new government headed by Michel Temer, Rousseff’s former vice president, ”paves the way for more violence against women, due to its misogynistic nature,” she said, pointing out that no ministry is headed by a woman and complaining about proposals to reverse previous progress made in empowering women.

Excerpt:

Women in rural Timor-Leste work hard but still fall behind. Credit: © Alexia Skok.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2015 (IPS)

In Timor-Leste, the gap between rich and poor is most keenly felt by rural women and children. But while women are working hard to help rebuild Timor-Leste, their contributions are not always recognised, in a country where men’s narratives still heavily dominate.

Ahead of International Women’s Day, IPS looks at some of the challenges and achievements Timorese women have experienced since the small island country gained independence in 2002.“Wawata Topu are the living example that women's roles are not marginal at all." -- Enrique Alonso

From the mountains

Timor-Leste is an island nation, with its heart in its sacred mountains, known as the ‘foho’. The foho were home to Timor-Leste’s resistance fighters who defended their country during 24 years of violent Indonesian occupation.

Bella Galhos was one of those resistance fighters. After her brothers were murdered and her father tortured by the Indonesians, she infiltrated their army, gaining their trust until they sent her as a student ambassador to Canada. Once in Canada she defected, travelling through North America and raising awareness about the atrocities in her home country.

Since returning home in 1999, Galhos has become an advocate for Timor-Leste’s women and children, as well as the environment.

She is speaking Friday in the national capital Dili at a special event ahead of International Women’s Day on Mar. 8.

Galhos spoke with IPS about her new project, a green school in the mountain village of Maubisse. “I have very profound reasons why I came to Maubisse,” Galhos told IPS in a phone interview earlier this week. “First is because of my mother who passed away last year, she was a great teacher.”

“This place where I actually started this project, was known to be the first female school in the area. I didn’t want to lose that value that my Mum started (here) a long long time ago,” Galhos said. “Growing up in this country I’m also aware very much that the issue of environment is not considered an important issue. And I’m afraid that in the long run we are actually going to have a big problem in this country.”

For this reason, Galhos has started her environmental project in Maubisse, using a social-enterprise model.

“I want to give the kids a place where they can come and learn about growing fruits and vegetables,” she told IPS. She also hopes to teach them “life skills such as peace, love, kindness, not only towards our environment but also towards people.”

WAWATA TOPU – Mermaids of Timor-Leste [Trailer English Sub.] from David Palazón on Vimeo.

Galhos says that women in rural Timor-Leste face many challenges, including a lack of access to the information they need, a lack of health care services and domestic violence.

She said that poverty in the rural areas where most people still live a subsistence lifestyle can be seen at many levels.

“The children’s malnutrition, you can really look at them and see that these people do not have enough food or they do not have food with protein or vitamins. You can really see it in the way they look,” she said.

Galhos says that an office job in the capital Dili is not for everyone, as can already be seen with many rural people coming to the capital struggling to find work.

She hopes that her project will become self-sustaining as a social enterprise, by capitalising on the areas beauty and international eco-tourism potential.

However, she is disappointed that the government has not responded to her requests for financial support, after eight months of submitting her proposals to many different departments.

“It’s not easy at all. There are huge obstacles. As a woman in a country that’s male dominated, basically I do not have a place where I can turn to,” she said.

Wawata Topu are the women spear fishers of Timor-Leste. Credit: David Palazón.

Timor-Leste’s government has set aside revenue from the country’s share of oil reserves in the Timor Sea, to help fund the country’s development.

However, there are concerns that the funds from the oil are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few and are not reaching the rural poor, or women.

Galhos has so far funded the green school project with her own salary and with support from her friends overseas. She is disappointed her requests for funding from the government have not been taken seriously.

“I don’t see many Timorese women trying to do what I’m doing, being successful in getting government support,” she said. “Though I still have a very pessimistic feeling towards the current government I am still working on getting them to see.”

This is real social and economic development for the benefit of all people, especially for people in the Maubisse area, she said.

To the sea

In another part of Timor-Leste women divers are challenging dominant narratives, that don’t value women’s work.

The women divers of Adara on Atauro island have reached a worldwide audience through the short film Wawata Topu. The film was last week awarded best foreign documentary at the American Online Film Awards in New York.

IPS spoke with Enrique Alonso, who co-directed and co-produced the film, along with David Palazón.

“If you review the available bibliography on the role of women in the Timor-Leste fisheries sector, you will find that women are missing,” Alonso told IPS. “Some reports developed in the last years shed some light, but for the most part (the women) were totally invisible.

“All along the country you might find that women in the fishing communities have a crucial role in households’ income management, livestock rearing and craft making, post harvest and fish drying, they participate in seasonal shore fishing (such as the sea worms harvest) and mostly in shellfish gathering and reef gleaning.

“There is one specific report of a study conducted in the east side of the main island where the researchers define women’s roles in the fisheries as ‘marginal’.”

“Wawata Topu are the living example that women’s roles are not ‘marginal’ at all,” Alonso said. “The film shows that their work is of primary importance not only in regards the provision of food but also in the market chain.”

Alonso says that the women of Adara have to walk for hours every Saturday to get to the market to sell their fish.

“They are the ones who transport and sell the fish, caught also by men, to the market every week. They are the brokers upon which the incomes of many families depend. The kids have to walk around one hour to get to the school through the rugged coastline. If it rains it is too risky for them to go,” he said.

“These are tough conditions. Within this context, these diver women are among the most vulnerable groups.”

The film documents how the women of Adara have adapted to the tough conditions and broken down gender barriers by becoming spear fishers themselves.

“As Maria the pioneer diver explains in the film, she started to fish because she was hungry. She challenged the social barriers and joined men in speargun fishing,” Alonso explained.

The film has helped women by giving them narrative with which to challenge unfair power structures.

“Through the film (women) raised their voice and got heard,” Alonso said.

“Power is also about discourse and narrative, and in challenging power the narrative games are crucial,” he said.

The film has been screened widely, including at International Women’s Day events around the world.

The most important event occurred at the National Day of Timorese Women, Alonso said.

“That day, the Secretary of State for Promotion of Equality granted Maria Cabeça and the Wawata Topu with the Women of the Year Award. In a way, the film has contributed to put Atauro Island and the Wawata Topu on the map.”

This article is also available in Portuguese

Edited by Kitty Stapp

All across Asia, men face almost no consequences for domestic violence and women have few places to turn for help, allowing the abuse to continue in a vicious cycle. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2015 (IPS)

Nearly half of the four billion people who reside in the Asia-Pacific region are women. They comprise two-thirds of the region’s poor, with millions either confined to their homes or pushed into the informal labour market where they work without any safeguards for paltry daily wages. Millions more become victims of trafficking and are forced into prostitution or sexual slavery.

Others find themselves battling an enemy much closer to home; in fact, for many women the greatest threat is inside the home itself, where domestic abuse and intimate partner violence is a daily occurrence.

Half of all South Asian nations, and 60 percent of countries in the Pacific, have no laws against domestic violence. -- Asia Pacific Forum (APF)
UN Women says that women in Asia and the Pacific retain one of the world’s highest rates of gender-based violence, much of it concentrated within a single home or perpetrated by a spouse or intimate partner.

In the Pacific Island nation of Papua New Guinea, for instance, 58 percent of women claim to have experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse in relationships, while 55 percent say they were forced into sexual encounters against their will.

In Fiji, an island nation in the South Pacific, 66 percent of women report the use of violence by intimate partners; 44 percent suffered the abuse while pregnant.

In East Timor, one in four women experience physical violence at the hands of a partner every year and 16 percent of married women report being coerced by their husbands into having sex.

Any number of reasons could explain this grim reality. According to the Asia Pacific Forum (APF), “Women in the region experience some of the lowest rates of political representation, employment and property ownership in the world.”

Even those who have jobs earn less than their male counterparts, with a pay gap for women in the region ranging from 54-90 percent, despite the existence of laws supposedly guaranteeing ‘equal pay for equal work’.

A complete absence of legal provisions against sexual harassment in the workplace means that between 30 and 40 percent of working women in Asia and the Pacific report experiencing verbal, physical or sexual abuse, APF says.

The organisation also found that half of all South Asian nations, and 60 percent of countries in the Pacific, have no laws against domestic violence.

In this legal vacuum, men face almost no consequences for their actions and women have few places to turn for help, allowing the abuse to continue in a vicious cycle.

It also means that government data on abuse are, at best, extremely conservative estimates, since most women do not report violent incidents – either from fear of reprisals or because of a lack of faith in the legal system to deliver any solutions.

In India, for example, the most recent government household survey found that 40 percent of women had been abused in their homes; but an independent survey backed by the Planning Commission of India puts the number closer to 84 percent.

In Indonesia, where the police recorded over 150,000 cases of violence against women in 2009 – 96 percent of which were incidents involving a husband and wife – activists estimate that just one out of 10 cases actually gets reported; meaning the real number of survivors of domestic violence is at least nine times higher than official figures indicate.

Last year the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW) reported that 2013 was one of the worst years for women, with the highest number of reported incidents of violence.

Citing statistics from the 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), the Commission stated that 14.4 percent of married women, and 37 percent of separated or widowed women, experienced spousal abuse.

Four percent of all women who have ever been pregnant have suffered violence at the hands of a partner, while three in five abused women report long-lasting physical and psychological impacts of the violence or battery.

Policy-makers say tougher implementation of laws partially accounts for the increased number of reported incidents, which saw a 49.5 percent rise from 2012.

The same could soon be true in China, where the recently released draft of the country’s first anti-domestic violence law was hailed by civil society as a step towards stemming rampant abuse – physical, sexual and psychological – in millions of households.

Data from the government-run All-China Women’s Federation show that some 40 percent of women have been subjected to physical or sexual violence in their relationships, while just seven percent of battered women report the violence to the authorities.

U.N. agencies say a dearth of laws against marital rape in the region has fostered a sense of impunity among husbands. In 2012, UN Women found that only eight countries across Asia and the Pacific had laws that specifically criminalised marital rape, leading millions – including women – to feel that men were justified in sexually or physically abusing their wives.

Too often, the legal system operates in ways that leaves women out in the cold and allows perpetrators of violence to walk free.

Courts are largely inaccessible to women in rural areas; legal fees and the price of forensic examinations are cost-prohibitive to women who are not in control of their own finances; and male biases within the police force means that law enforcement officials are largely unsympathetic to the few who dare come forward to report abuse.

Furthermore, women in Asia are woefully underrepresented in the legal system. While UN Women reports that a “quarter of judges and around a fifth of prosecution staff in East Asia and the Pacific are women […] South Asia lags behind, with women making up just nine percent of judges and four percent of prosecution staff.”

These numbers are even more dismal in the police, with women in South Asia comprising a mere three percent of the police force, a figure that rises to just nine percent for East Asia and the Pacific.

Home to four of the five fastest-growing economies in the world, Asia’s shining visage is darkened by the shadow of misery its women face in their own homes.

Absent the implementation of robust laws, sustained efforts to improve women’s representation at all levels of government and genuine measures to ensure women gain a sturdy economic foothold in all countries in the region, experts say it is unlikely that domestic violence will decline.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Government data indicates that 40 percent of all Indian women have experienced domestic violence, but activists believe the figure is closer to 84 percent. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Shai Venkatraman
MUMBAI, Feb 27 2015 (IPS)

“One time my husband started slapping me hard on the face because I had not cooked the rice to his satisfaction,” Suruchi* told IPS. “He hit me so hard that my infant daughter fell from my arms to the ground.”

For 20 years 47-year-old Suruchi, a resident of India’s coastal megacity Mumbai, faced physical and verbal abuse within the walls of her home. Her husband would often lock her out of their apartment through the night and one day even tried to strangle her.

“I had hoped all along that by obeying [my husband] things would eventually get better. While recovering in hospital I understood [...] that I owed it to myself and my children to walk out.” -- a domestic violence survivor in Mumbai
“I never knew what would set him off – it could be talking to a neighbour or looking out of the window. I would get ready for work in the morning and he would suddenly announce that I had to stay home all day.”

Suruchi had no access to her earnings as she was expected to hand her salary over to her in-laws. “On the rare occasion that I spoke out, I would get beaten up.” Her parents sensed that she was unhappy but Suruchi never told them the full story.

She was just 20 when she got married, she told IPS, and the constant abuse has left a profound impact on her and her children, especially her son who is anxious and largely uncommunicative.

It was only after she suffered a nervous breakdown following an especially violent assault that she finally acted.

“I had hoped all along that by obeying him things would eventually get better. While recovering in hospital I understood that my attitude had fuelled the abuse and that I owed it to myself and my children to walk out.”

Today Suruchi has put the past behind her. She lives independently and is pursuing a degree in law. However, her story is all too common in millions of homes across India.

A 2006 government survey, the last time the state collected comprehensive household data, stated that 40 percent of Indian women faced domestic violence.

Considering that women comprise over 48 percent of India’s population of 1.2 billion people, this means that hundreds of millions of people are living a nightmare in what is considered the world’s largest democracy.

However many experts believe that a 2003 survey conducted by a non-profit and supported by the Planning Commission of India that threw up a figure of 84 percent paints a more accurate picture.

“It tells us that many cases are going unreported,” says Rashmi Anand, a domestic violence survivor who runs a free legal aid and counseling service for victims in the capital, New Delhi, in collaboration with the police.

Interestingly, figures for domestic violence reported in crime statistics in many states are significantly higher than those that find their way into national-level databases.

An abundance of violence, too few solutions

In a 2013 study by the New Delhi-based think tank National Council for Applied Economic Research, over half of the married women surveyed said that they would be beaten up for going out of the house without permission (54 percent); not cooking properly (35 percent) and inadequate dowry payments (36 percent).

Indian law bans dowry, but the practice remains widespread.

Studies also indicate that economic and social gains have put women at far greater risk in a deeply patriarchal country like India.

A 2014 report in Population and Development Review, a peer reviewed journal, shows that women who are more educated than their husbands are at higher risk of domestic violence as men see in it a way to re-assert their power and control over their wives.

In 1983 domestic violence was recognised as a criminal offence under Section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code. However only in 2005 was a separate civil law to deal with the specifics of domestic violence introduced.

Among other things, the law defines domestic violence and widens the scope to verbal, economic and emotional violence. It also takes into account a woman’s need for financial support and protects her from being thrown out of her home and provides for monetary relief and temporary custody of children.

Since it came into force, activists say there has been a gradual rise in the number of women seeking help.

“Earlier women would seek legal help only when they were thrown out of their marital homes”, says New Delhi-based lawyer C.P Nautiyal, who counsels victims of domestic violence.

“Most women believe that suffering verbal abuse or being slapped by their husbands is expected behaviour. Since the law came into being there is greater awareness regarding domestic violence.”

However, there is still considerable stigma attached to being divorced and this prevents many women from reaching out.

“Economically women in India have made great progress but not so much when it comes to personal growth,” says Anand. “The attitude remains skewed when it comes to relationships. A woman continues to be defined by marriage and this cuts across all classes.”

Veteran lawyer and women’s rights activist Flavia Agnes agrees.

“There is a lot of pressure to stay married,” she tells IPS. “I have found that even highly placed women don’t like to reveal that they are divorced or separated. It’s like being raped, they will hide it as much as possible.”

Experts say that it is women from under-educated or underprivileged backgrounds who are reaching out for help in greater numbers. “Those who come from the upper classes are generally more reluctant to walk out as they stand to lose social status or a certain lifestyle,” Agnes says.

However it is precisely those women who are reaching out in greater numbers that the system is failing the most.

Most keenly felt is the lack of adequate government-run shelters. Barring the southern state of Kerala where shelter homes for domestic violence victims have been set up across 12 districts, authorities in other states have been neglectful.

“I am constantly looking for places where I can send impoverished, battered women to stay,” says Anand. Of the five shelters for women in crisis in the capital New Delhi, only two are functional. Even these can accommodate just 30 women each, and not for more than a month.

“Women are kept like prisoners there,” Agnes tells IPS about the shelters. “They can’t leave, not even to go to their places of work. Children above seven cannot stay with their mothers. Only those who are utterly destitute and desperate consider staying there.”

Another critical need is for fast-track courts to ensure cases get heard rapidly. The Indian legal system is notoriously slow and cases drag on for years, even decades.

However tougher laws alone cannot stem the tide of domestic violence as long as attitudes stay rooted in patriarchy.

The last government study done in 2006, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), revealed that over 51 percent of Indian men didn’t think it wrong to assault their wives. More shockingly, 54 percent of the women themselves felt such violence was justified on certain grounds.

Activists say such biases are reflected every time a victim of domestic violence comes seeking help.

“We see it on the part of the police, NGOs, stakeholders and religious authorities,” points out Agnes. “The protection officer is supposed to collect evidence, file an order and take the victim to court. Instead the tactic is to tell her, ‘He slapped you a few times that’s all. Don’t make a big deal and sort it out’, and she is sent back to the hellhole.

“We have to stop this current approach of putting a Band-Aid on a gaping, bleeding wound [if we want] change to come about,” she stressed.

*Name changed upon request

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Georgians gathered in central Tbilisi on Nov. 25 to rally against domestic violence during the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Credit: Giorgi Lomsadze

By Giorgi Lomsadze
TBILISI, Dec 11 2014 (EurasiaNet)

The issue of domestic violence is moving to the forefront of public attention in Georgia after a series of killings of women at the hands of their respective spouses or ex-spouses made headlines in local mass media.

While no quick fix exists for the spike in violence, observers believe that changing the way police respond to abuse complaints is a good place to start.

When 22-year-old model Salome Jorbenadze phoned the police earlier this year in the western town of Zugdidi, she was hoping to receive protection against her abusive former husband. But all she received was a lecture from two policewomen about what a woman has to do to pacify an embittered ex, a source familiar with the case told EurasiaNet.org.”For many, being a man means to show that you've got the power, that you are in charge, and some just flip when they cannot assert that role and they take it out on women.” -- Naniko Vachnadze

Jorbenadze went on to complain to an in-house police-oversight agency. But no restraining order was issued against her former husband, Sergi Satseradze, a police officer. He later shot Jorbenadze dead in a crowded Zugdidi park on Jul. 25.

Twenty-four other women are estimated to have met similar fates this year. One analyst studying the trend asserts police have repeatedly failed to act on women’s reports of receiving threats from their former or current spouses.

“Such cases show that the state is failing to fulfill its ultimate human rights commitment: protecting the lives of its citizens,” said Tamar Dekanosidze, an attorney specialising in human-rights law at the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, a civil-rights watchdog.

English teacher Maka Tsivtsivadze also reported death threats she was receiving from her former husband, but he only received a verbal warning from police. Her Oct. 17 murder, taking place in broad daylight inside a centrally located university building in the capital, Tbilisi, shocked city residents.

The number of such killings is believed to be a record for a single year, but the way the police categorise such murders muddies the picture. A killing involving a man and his current or former wife is almost always classified as an unintentional, rather than premeditated murder – even in one 2013 case when an ex-husband fired 24 shots at his ex-wife, Dekanosidze said.

The misclassification of many killings skews official crime statistics and also leads to less severe sentences for those convicted of crimes. Premeditated murders carry a seven-to-15 year prison sentence; death from bodily injuries, six to eight years.

Prosecutors and police did not respond to requests for comment.

Tsivtsivadze’s case may be a tipping point for change. Amid a recent series of protests and rallies designed to heighten awareness of domestic violence, officials have acknowledged that Georgia has a femicide problem. It has set up an ad-hoc commission to collect recommendations from civil society groups and international experts on how to tackle gender-based violence.

UN Women, the United Nations agency that focuses on women’s issues, has advised that simplifying procedures for issuing restraining orders could help. The organisation’s Georgia branch has suggested allowing police to issue a restraining order even without court approval, and using bracelets “to control compliance,” said Irina Japaridze, who runs a gender-equality programme for UN Women.

At the same time, many recent public discussions have tried to put Georgians collectively on the couch to try to gain insight into the motivations behind the violence. Social psychologists worry about a copycat-killing effect, but Georgian society’s patriarchal norms are broadly seen as the root of the problem.

“I think we generally have very wrong ideas about what it means to be a man,” commented Naniko Vachnadze, a female graduate student at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs in Tbilisi. ”For many, being a man means to show that you’ve got the power, that you are in charge, and some just flip when they cannot assert that role and they take it out on women.”

Thirty-four percent of 2,391 respondents in a 2013 poll run by the UN Women programme said that violence against women “can be justified in certain domestic circumstances, such as neglect of maternal duties or other family cares,” Japaridze said.

Men are often given the benefit of the doubt for such behaviour, an attitude that can result in psychological abuse, Vachnadze said. “Many husbands are telling their wives not to go to work, not to visit friends, stay home and raise the kids,” she elaborated.

The perception of a husband’s role can continue even after a divorce. Many Georgians see an ex-wife leading an independent life as a humiliation for the man.

As elsewhere in the macho Caucasus, male and female frequently are not seen as created equal. The tradition of parents passing on property exclusively to a male heir still exists; a female fetus tends more often to lead to an abortion.

Other underlying psychological issues are believed to contribute to abuse – namely, the traumatizing post-Soviet experience of wars, lawlessness and economic collapse, as well as stress associated with the fast pace of societal change over the past two decades. Some see the violence even as a manifestation of men’s reaction to urban Georgian women’s increasing public prominence, whether as entrepreneurs, politicians, civil-society figures or, even, car drivers.

“Although we say that we live a very traditionalist society, many cultural changes have happened in recent years and it is clashing with ossified views on gender roles,” commented prominent art critic and feminist activist Teo Khatiashvili.

Tackling the cultural aspects of violence against women may be a far greater challenge than improving the police response, but Georgia, as a signatory of the U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, has international commitments to do so.

Parliament is expected soon to ratify the Istanbul Convention, a treaty that stipulates that a failure to address domestic violence constitutes a human-rights violation. Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili has underlined that Georgia does not shy away from such definitions.

“Respect for women is a lasting tradition in Georgia and the increased acts of violence against women are incompatible with this tradition and are extremely shameful,” he said on Nov. 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Editor’s note:  Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance journalist based in Tbilisi. He is a frequent contributor to EurasiaNet.org’s Tamada Tales blog. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Palestinian families take shelter at an UNRWA school in Gaza City, after evacuating their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, July 2014. UNRWA has now launched a humanitarian reconstruction programme. Credit: Shareef Sarhan/UNRWA Archives

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sep 17 2014 (IPS)

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has launched an ambitious recovery plan for Gaza following the 50-day devastating war between Hamas and Israel which has left the coastal territory decimated.

However, the successful implementation of this plan requires enormous international funding as well as a long-term ceasefire to enable the lifting of the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the territory.

“We are working on a 24-month plan aimed at 70 percent of Gaza’s population who are refugees but this will only be possible if the blockade is lifted and construction materials and other goods are allowed into Gaza,” Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA), told IPS.

“Taxpayers are being asked once again to fund the reconstruction of Gaza and at this point there are no security guarantees, so a permanent ceasefire is essential if we are not to return to the repetitive cycle of destruction and then reconstruction,” Gunness said.“If Gaza is to recover and Gazans are to have any hope for the future, it is vital that the international community intervenes to help those Gazan civilians who have and continue to pay the highest price” – Chris Gunness, UNRWA spokesman

The attack on Gaza, euphemistically code-named “Operation Protective Edge” by the Israelis, now stands as the most severe military campaign against Gaza since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967.

“The devastation caused this time is unprecedented in recent memory. Parts of Gaza resemble an earthquake zone with 29 km of damaged infrastructure,” said Gunness.

Following the ceasefire, the Palestinian death toll stood at 2,130 and more than 11,000 injured.

Over 18,000 housing units were destroyed, four hospitals and five clinics were closed due to severe damage, while 17 of Gaza’s 32 hospitals and 45 of 97 its primary health clinics were substantially damaged. Reconstruction is estimated to cost over 7 billion dollars.

According to UNRWA, 22 schools were completely destroyed and 118 damaged during Israeli bombardments, while many higher education facilities were damaged.

Some 110,000 displaced Gazans remain in UN emergency shelters or with host families, according to UNRWA.

The reconstruction of shelters alone will cost over 380 million dollars, 270 million of which relates to Palestinian refugees.

According to the Palestinian Federation of Industries, 419 businesses and workshops were damaged, with 129 completely destroyed.

“We have a two-year plan in place which addresses the spectrum of Palestinian needs. Currently we have 300 engineers on the ground in Gaza assessing reconstruction needs,” Gunness told IPS.

Palestinian boy inspecting the remains of a house which was destroyed during an air strike in Central Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, July 2014. Credit: Shareef Sarhan/UNRWA Archives

UNRWA’s strategic approach has been divided into the relief period, the early recovery period and the recovery period of up to four months following the cessation of hostilities.

“The relief period, which will continue for the next four months, involves urgent humanitarian intervention including providing shelter, food and medical needs for displaced Gazans,” said the UNTWA spokesman.

“The early recovery period will continue for the next year and will address the critical needs of the population such as repairing damage to environmental infrastructure, restoring UNRWA facilities and supplementary assistance for livelihood provisioning.

“The recovery period will last for two years and will focus on the impact of the conflict through a sustainable livelihoods programme promoting self-sufficiency and completing the transition of UNRWA emergency and extended-stay shelters back to intended use and full operational capacity.”

One thrust of UNRWA’s programme will focus on protection, gender and disability. The increased numbers of female-headed households and households with disabled men is having an impact on unemployment patterns.

“Women are the primary caregivers and are closely linked to homes and the psychological trauma being exhibited by children. Furthermore, there have already been signs of increased gender-based violence,” explained Gunness.

“We want to focus on raising awareness of domestic violence, how to deal with violence in the home and building healthy and equal relationships through our gender empowerment programme.”

The UN agency will also address food distribution by providing minimum caloric requirements through basic food commodities, including bread, corned beef or tuna, dairy products and fresh vegetables. Non-food items provided include hygiene kits and water tanks for 42,000 families.

Emergency repairs to shelters are also being undertaken with 70 percent more homes destroyed or damaged than during the 2008-2009 hostilities. Emergency cash assistance for refugee families to meet a range of basic needs is also being distributed.

“Due to the enormous damage done to hospitals and health facilities, UNRWA has so far established 22 health points to provide basic health services to the sick and wounded, and health teams have been deployed to monitor key health issues,” noted Gunness.

The psychological impact of the war is another area that concerns UNRWA.  “There isn’t a person in Gaza who hasn’t been affected by the war. In consultation with UNRWA’s Community Health Programme, we have hired additional counsellors and youth coordinators who will provide a range of services to groups and individuals.”

“If Gaza is to recover and Gazans are to have any hope for the future,” said Gunness, “it is vital that the international community intervenes to help those Gazan civilians who have and continue to pay the highest price.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Abusers are often family members, making victims reluctant to report the violence. Credit: Boris Bartels/cc by 2.0

By Chau Ngo
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 2014 (IPS)

A veteran women’s rights activist, Patricia Brownell was still taken aback by the prevalence of abuse against older women she discovered during dozens of conversations she and her colleagues had with victims.

They found that for every one official report of abuse made by agencies in New York State, there are 23 self-reports, with the abusers ranging from husbands, sons, daughters and other relatives to complete strangers.“In many cases, the victims did not want to talk about it. They felt guilty. They felt it was their fault.” -- Patricia Brownell

“It’s underreported,” Brownell, vice president of the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, told IPS. “In many cases, the victims did not want to talk about it. They felt guilty. They felt it was their fault.”

Most research on the abuse of older women has focused on North America and Europe. A study conducted in five European countries in 2011 found that around 28 percent of older women had experienced abuse.

The situation in developing countries, where the socio-economic conditions are worse and the welfare system weaker, mostly remains unknown.

“It could be worse,” said Brownell, citing harmful traditional practices against widows or those accused of witchcraft in some developing countries. “It really introduces another dimension of abuse against older women. It’s community abuse.”

Violence directed against younger women has long overshadowed that against the elderly, who in some cases are more vulnerable. There has been so little research into the issue that activists said they do not know its full scope yet, hampering efforts to prevent and fight the violence.

Abuse of older women can take various forms, from physical, psychological and emotional (verbal aggression or threats), to sexual, financial (swindling, theft), and intentional or unintentional neglect, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Addressing the Fifth Working Group on Aging at the United Nations in New York, Silvia Perel-Levin, chair of the NGO Committee on Ageing in Geneva, showed how fragmented the picture is: the prevalence of abuse ranges from six percent to 44 percent of those surveyed, depending on the geographic location and socio-economic conditions. 

While there has been an increase in reports of abuse and violence against older women in the past few years, it does not necessarily mean the problem is worsening, Perel-Levin told IPS.

“I believe [violence and abuse] have always been there, but they were never investigated, never reported,” she said. “That was always a taboo. We don’t have enough data about violence against older women.”

A long-neglected issue

The issue has been neglected partly because of the misconception that older women are less likely to suffer from domestic violence, activists said. Studies on domestic violence and reproductive health tend to examine the situation of women under 49 years old. The age range has only been broadened recently.

“People may think that older women are not subject to rape, and that their husbands stop beating them because they are 50,” said Perel-Levin. “This is not true.”

For many women, the abuse begins later in life. The abusers are sometimes beloved family members, which complicates the situation, as the victims are reluctant to report the violence.

Living with an extended family does not guarantee protection, because in many cases, the sons and other family members are the abusers. In several Asian countries, the daughters-in-law, who are expected to take care of their husbands’ aged parents, sometimes turn out to be abusers, activists said.

In developing countries, the situation is difficult for the victims even when they report the abuses, said Kazi Reazul Hoque of the Bangladesh National Human Rights Commission.

The older women in that South Asian country most likely to face abuse and violence are from ethnic minorities and religious communities, Hoque, a former judge, told IPS. These are already weaker and poorer communities, which encouraged the offenders to commit violence.

“Even when they bring the case to the court, it’s still difficult for them to pursue ‘the war’,” he said. “How long can these poor people fight?”

Activists have been calling for more research into violence against older women, such as by U.N. Women, the United Nations agency for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

James Collins, representative to the United Nations of the International Council on Social Welfare, told IPS, “We will continue to raise this issue during the events of the Sustainable Development Goals. We’re here push for the rights of older people.”

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at ngocchau4009@gmail.com

Women and children are badly affected by the rise in alcohol consumption in Sri Lanka's Northern Province. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
DHARMAPURAM, Aug 3 2014 (IPS)

Back in the day when the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ran a de-facto state in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, alcohol consumption was closely monitored, and sternly frowned upon.

But after government forces destroyed the militant group in 2009, ushering a new era into a region that had lived through three decades of civil conflict, strict rules governing the brewing and sale of spirits have lost their muscle.

Plagued by poverty, trauma and a lack of employment opportunities, civilians in the former war zone are increasingly turning to the bottle to drink their troubles away.

“There is worryingly high casual and habitual use of alcohol in the region. Drinking hard liquor by the end of the day is becoming a [norm],” Vedanayagam Thabendran, district officer for social services for the Kilinochchi district in the Northern Province, about 240 km from the capital Colombo, told IPS.

Available data on alcohol consumption trends back his assessment.

“There is a visible shift in consumption patterns in the war-affected areas from the days of the LTTE. They did not allow the northern citizens to drink moonshine [freely]." -- G D Dayaratna, manger of the health and economic policy unit at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS)
According to a December 2013 survey by the Alcohol and Drug Information Centre (ADIC), a national non-governmental organisation, the northern district of Mullaitivu had the second highest alcohol consumption rate in the island, with 34.4 percent of the population identifying as ‘habitual users of alcohol’.

The survey covered 10 of the 25 districts in the country, including two in the Northern Province.

“Frequency of alcohol consumption was highest in Mullaitivu district, among the ten districts surveyed. In both the Jaffna and Mullaitivu districts, beer consumption was higher than arrack (hard liquor) consumption,” said Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, who heads the Jaffna-based Point Pedro Institute of Development.

The researcher told IPS that “anecdotal evidence and alcohol sales figures” indicate a link between the end of the civil war and the rise in alcohol consumption.

District official Thabendran said that alcohol abuse was more pronounced in interior villages that had once fallen under the purview of the LTTE. He identified one such village as Dharmapuram, located about 17 km northeast of Kilinochchi Town.

“We keep getting regular reports of domestic disputes because of alcohol consumption and we know that there are a lot of places (in that village) where illegal alcohol is available,” he stated.

Humanitarian workers in the region said that Dharmapuram has acquired the nickname ‘booze centre’ because of the free availability of illicit liquor.

“One of the disturbing trends is the prevalence of female headed households that have begun to sell illicit liquor as an easy income-generation method,” said a humanitarian worker who wished to remain anonymous because he was working with the families in question.

Homemade brews – typically derived from coconut, palmyra flowers or sugarcane – are cheap to make and easy to procure. Women in the north say they earn about 100 rupees (0.7 dollars) per litre of local moonshine.

A man sits in his makeshift kitchen in the village of Dharmapuram after returning home drunk. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Drinkers say that illegal alcohol can be obtained for less than one-fifth the price of the lowest-grade legal liquor.

“I haven’t seen this much alcohol here for almost 50 years,” Arumygam Sadagopan, a 60-year-old resident of Dharmapuram, admitted.

A retired education officer, Sadagopan told IPS that habitual drinking, especially among men, is exacerbating poverty and fueling domestic violence. He added that his neighbour’s family was now at “breaking” point due to the husband’s daily bouts of drinking.

“He has two school-going children who now mostly see their father drunk, reeking of alcohol and arguing or fighting with their mother,” he stated.

The end of the war in May 2009 not only removed restrictions on easy access to liquor outlets, it also removed social barriers that had kept consumption in check.

“There is a visible shift in consumption patterns in the war-affected areas from the days of the LTTE. They did not allow the northern citizens to drink moonshine (freely),” said G D Dayaratna, manger of the health and economic policy unit at the think-tank Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).

He also said that the LTTE kept a close tab on alcohol production in areas they controlled. All such safeguards crumbled along with the demise of the armed group.

Still, the situation is not specific to the former war zone. Islandwide alcohol production and consumption have seen sharp increases since the end of the conflict.

In  2013 the Excise Department earned over 66 million rupees (over 500,000 dollars) in duties from the sale of alcohol, an increase of 10 percent from 2012.

In 2009 Sri Lanka produced 41 million liters of hard liquor and 55 million liters of beer, but by 2013 hard liquor production had touched 44 million liters, while beer production was an astonishing 120 million liters.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the total alcohol per capita consumption rate among people aged 15 years and older between 2008 and 2010 was 20.1 litres.

There are no official figures available for the quantity of illegal, homemade alcohol but a 2002 study found that 77 percent of all liquor consumed in Sri Lanka was illicitly brewed. In 2013, fines for illegal liquor touched 127 million rupees (975,000 dollars).

Social workers like Thabendran said that the worst cases of alcohol abuse were visible in poor households in the northern province, where men were either unemployed or engaged in backbreaking daily paid manual labour.

Men who engage in hard, manual labour are the primary consumers of alcohol in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

There are no official figures for full unemployment rates in the north. However, in the two districts where figures are available – 9.3 percent in Kilinochchi and 8.1 percent in Mannar – they were over twice the national rate of four percent.

Sarvananthan estimates that unemployment could be above 20 percent here in Dharmapuram, while employment in the informal sector, which includes agriculture, forestry, fisheries and day labour, hovers at just about 30 percent.

Poverty levels are also high in the province, with four of its five districts recording rates higher than the national average of 6.7 percent.

The three districts where the war was most intense, Kilinochchi, Mannar and Mullaittivu, record poverty rates of 12.7 percent, 20.1 percent and 28.8 percent respectively, according to the latest government poverty headcount released in April.

“When you look at alcohol consumption patterns, you see they have a direct correlation with the type of employment. Manual labourers and daily wage earners are more likely to consume alcohol at the end of the day,” Dayaratna pointed out.

Sadagopan has a simple solution to the alcohol menace, at least in the short term. “The laws against illicit brewing and selling should be strictly enforced,” he said. “The problem is, since our villages are in the interior, enforcement is lax.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Fatema,15, sits on the bed at her home in Khulna, Bangladesh, in April 2014. Fatema was saved from being married a few weeks earlier. Local child protection committee members stopped the marriage with the help of law enforcement agencies. Credit: UNICEF

By A. D. McKenzie
LONDON, Jul 23 2014 (IPS)

Heightening their campaign to eradicate violence against women and girls, United Nations agencies and civil groups have called for increased action to end child marriage and female genital mutilation.

At the first Girl Summit in London Wednesday, hosted by the U.K. government and UNICEF, delegates said they wanted to send a strong message that there should be “zero tolerance” for these practices.

“Millions of young girls around the world are in danger of female genital mutilation and child marriage – and of losing their childhoods forever to these harmful practices,” Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s Chief of Child Protection, told IPS.“Millions of young girls around the world are in danger of female genital mutilation and child marriage – and of losing their childhoods forever to these harmful practices” – Susan Bissell, UNICEF's Chief of Child Protection

“FGM is an excruciatingly painful and terrifying ordeal for young girls. The physical effects can last a lifetime, resulting in horrific infections, difficulty passing urine, infertility and even death.”

Bissell said that when a young girl is married “it tends to mark the end of her education and she’s more likely to have children when she’s still a child herself – with a much higher risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth”.

“Without firm and accelerated action now, hundreds of millions more girls will suffer permanent damage,” she added in an e-mail interview.

At the summit, the United Kingdom announced an FGM prevention programme, launched by the government’s Department of Health and the National Health Service (NHS) England. Backed by 1.4 million pounds, the programme is designed to improve the way in which the NHS tackles female genital mutilation and “clarify the role of health professionals which is to ‘care, protect, prevent’,” the government said.

According to British Prime Minister David Cameron, some 130,000 people are affected by FGM in the United Kingdom, with “60,000 girls under the age of 15 potentially at risk”, even though the practice is outlawed in the country.

The prevention programme will now make it mandatory for all “acute hospitals” to report the number of patients with FGM to the Department of Health on a monthly basis, as of September of this year.

U.N. officials said that the Girl Summit was a significant development because it marked the importance of the issues addressed.

“International leaders came together in one place and said enough is enough,” Bissell said.

While it is difficult to measure the impact of intensified campaigns on the reductions in child marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting over the past few years, the United Nations and other organisations have noted that the numbers of girls affected are in fact decreasing.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the percentage of women married before age 18 has dropped by about half, from 34 percent to 18 percent over the last three decades, UNICEF says.

In South Asia, the decline has been especially marked for marriages involving girls under age 15, dropping from 32 percent to 17 percent.

“The marriage of girls under age 18, however, is still commonplace,” Bissell told IPS.

“In Indonesia and Morocco, the risk of marrying before age 18 is less than half of what it was three decades ago. In Ethiopia, women aged 20 to 24 are marrying about three years later than their counterparts three decades ago,” she added.

Regarding female genital mutilation/cutting, Kenya and Tanzania have seen rates drop to one-third of their levels three decades ago through a combination of community activism and legislation, while in the Central African Republic, Iraq, Liberia and Nigeria, prevalence of FGM has dropped by as much as half, Bissell said.

However, officials stressed that with population growth, it is possible that progress in reducing child marriage will remain flat unless the commitments made at the Girl Summit are acted upon. Flat progress “isn’t good enough”, Bissell told IPS.

Recently released U.N. figures show that, despite the declines, child marriage is widespread, with more than 700 million women alive today who were married as children. UNICEF says that some 250 million women were married before the age of 15.

The highest percentage of these women can be found in South Asia, followed by East Asia and the Pacific which is home to 25 percent of girls and women married before the age of 18, UNICEF says.

Statistics also indicate that girls who marry before they turn 18 are less likely to remain in school and more likely to experience domestic violence. In addition, teenage mothers are more at risk from complications in pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s; some 70,000 adolescent girls die every year because of such complications, according to the United Nations.

The statistics on female genital mutilation are also cause for international concern, with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) saying that about 125 million girls and women have been subjected to the practice, which can lead to haemorrhage, infection, physical dysfunction, obstructed labour and death.

According to UNFPA, female genital mutilation/cutting and child marriage are human rights violations that both help to perpetuate girls’ low status by impairing their health and long-term development.

UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin told IPS that a number of states have adopted legislation against female genital mutilation/cutting but that some perpetrators are still operating with “impunity”.

Participating in the London summit, Osotimehin said that certain governments were facing challenges within their own countries because of long-held cultural beliefs, but like Bissell, he said that the picture is not completely bleak, because civil society and grassroots organisations are amplifying their campaigns.

“Our message for girls who are affected by these practices is that they have support – moral, psychological, physical and emotional support,” he told IPS. “We also want to send a message that those who are affected should advocate to try and stop these practices.”

Meanwhile, U.N. officials said it was significant that the summit saw commitment from the African Union and the deputy prime Minister of Ethiopia, as well as from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.K. Department for International Development (DfID). The Government of Canada and several other financial supporters also made commitments.

For the executive director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the pledges show support for the message of “zero tolerance” of child marriage and FGM that her organisation wishes to send. They are also a strong signal that the practices can be ended in a generation, she told IPS.

When Phumzile Khoza* came to the central Johannesburg antenatal clinic on a chilly day in August 2013, she was feeling on edge. Not about the medical procedures – she already had two children – but about talking to the nurse.

One in four South African women experience intimate partner violence during pregnancy. Credit: Alisa Hatfield

This was her third pregnancy living with HIV, but the first with a new partner from whom she had been hiding her status for the past two years.

This pregnancy had been rocky from the start. Khoza had been trying to convince her partner to join her for HIV testing, but he refused. Without couples’ counseling, Khoza was afraid to disclose, and it was becoming harder to take and hide her daily medication of antiretrovirals (ARV).

Khoza’s partner was now regularly slapping her, punching her stomach, and kicking her during arguments.  Khoza feared it would get worse if he learned she was HIV-positive.

Although she wanted help, Khoza imagined the nurses would not have time to talk through her complex situation. Plus, she had seen how angry the nurses became with women who defaulted on ARV treatment.

Looking back on that antenatal visit, Khoza reflected: “I was stressing about the way I lived my life, stressing about my past, stressing about my pregnancy. And I had no one.”

Shocking figures

Khoza’s story is increasingly common. An estimated one in four South African women experience intimate partner violence in the 12 months leading up to childbirth.

Violence in pregnancy is associated with pregnancy loss, miscarriage and neonatal death, higher rates of postpartum depression and poor health gains for infants.

In a systematic review of the literature, Dr Simukai Shamu, a Medical Research Council expert on violence, found that prevalence of violence among pregnant women in Africa is among the highest reported globally, and that a major risk factor for violence is HIV infection.

“Because most studies are cross-sectional, it’s difficult to tell whether violence was a result of demands or changes in life due to pregnancy, or if the pregnancy was the outcome of violence,” Shamu told IPS.

Since early 2013, a team from Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (Wits RHI) has been interviewing women living with violence in Johannesburg.

Lead researcher Nataly Woollett said that many women described pregnancy as a time of greater violence.

“Partly because they had to disclose their HIV status and partly because men use the woman’s antenatal visit –where testing is virtually mandatory – as a proxy for their own HIV status, so they are curious about the results,” she told IPS.

At the same clinic, IPS met Martha Ramphele*, who described the rapid escalation of violence that landed her in hospital while six-months pregnant: “He started telling me that I’m a fool and stupid. And then he strangled me and let his cousin beat me up.”

Ramphele reported the incident to the police, but later withdrew the charges to protect her safety and financial security. She suspected her HIV disclosure led to physical abuse, but she couldn’t be sure.

No one can say precisely what triggers violence, but often the blend of stress associated with pregnancy, the shifting power and control dynamics, coupled with a new HIV diagnosis, are enough to heighten conflict.

The nurses’ response

Violence in pregnancy impacts negatively on the health of HIV positive women.

Sister Marieta Booysen, a senior nurse with the Aurum Institute, a research organisation in Johannesburg, explained that pregnant women in violent relationships are the most likely to quit treatment: “When you tell a patient she is HIV-positive but she is scared to disclose to her partner, it is that very same patient who will default on her medication later.”

The Wits RHI team found that most antenatal nurses interviewed recognised that violence hurts adherence to ARV treatment but few know how to deal with the issue.

The poor health care response can partly be attributed to the lack of training but it may also reflect the fact that many nurses suffer violence at home and are afraid to respond.

Dr Nicola Christofides, an expert on both violence and HIV based at Wits University, explained that “nurses who experience violence in their own lives […] are either very sensitive to the issue of violence in their patients’ lives and very receptive, or the opposite, where they are actually in denial and shut down.”

Antenatal nurses want training to respond to violence, the WITS RHI project found.

IPS talked to Khoza at the antenatal clinic five months after she had first met a Wits RHI nurse of the Safe & Sound project, which identifies violence in pregnancy and provides one-on-one counseling and referrals in three antenatal clinics in Johannesburg.

The nurse referred Khoza to the nearest hospital offering psychological care and counseling.  “It is nice to talk about the difficult things if you have someone who understands the situation and gives you clues,” Khoza said.

Khoza had never spoken about the violence in her life until the antenatal visits. A few months later, she separated from the abusive partner and is finding ways to support her children.

“I still have stress but I don’t put that in my heart. I just tell myself everything is going to work out all right even though it is difficult,” Khoza said.

* Name changed to protect her safety.

When banker Darkhan Botabayev tried to book a flight on Kazakhstan’s national airline last September, what started as a routine transaction turned into an assault that shocked the nation: Botabayev lost his temper and punched the young female ticket clerk in the face.

Another violent incident occurred in October, when Kanatbay Turmaganbetov, a rural mayor in northern Kazakhstan, took exception to a woman photographing a billboard of President Nursultan Nazarbayev: He summoned her to his office where he “bashed her head against the wall, punched her several times in the chest and kicked her,” according to a local media report.“It is a social problem, because it goes beyond the boundaries of the family. It is a problem of the state.” -- Nadezhda Gladyr

Turmaganbetov was prosecuted, fined and fired; Botabayev was forced to resign as a member of Kazinvestbank’s board and blacklisted by Air Astana – after which he apologised to his victim bearing a bouquet of flowers, and donated 10,000 dollars to charity. These incidents caused an outcry in Kazakhstan, but activists point out that they aren’t isolated cases. Most disturbingly, many assaults against women take place behind closed doors.

Take Marina, who married an abusive man to escape a father who turned violent on her after she was raped at the age of 15 and became pregnant; or Irina, whose husband set fire to her mother’s flat after she fled there to escape further abuse. Some victims do not survive, like Rashida, found with a knife sticking out of her chest after her husband broke into her safe house, locked her daughters into a bedroom and stabbed her to death.

These testimonies were collected by the Podrugi (Girlfriends) Crisis Centre in Almaty, which offers psychological and legal support for victims of violence, and training for law-enforcement, education, and healthcare professionals. The organisation also is trying to force the issue up Kazakhstan’s political agenda.

When Podrugi was set up 15 years ago, domestic violence was not acknowledged as a problem or a crime, instead it was often portrayed as a private family matter. Activists’ relentless efforts have helped change public perceptions. And in last year’s state-of-the-nation address, an “alarmed” President Nazarbayev singled out the issue as one in need of attention.

“Violence is not a private problem,” Nadezhda Gladyr, Podrugi’s president, told EurasiaNet.org in an interview. “It is a social problem, because it goes beyond the boundaries of the family. It is a problem of the state.”

One landmark in the fight to raise awareness was the passing of a law against domestic violence in 2009. Legal amendments to tighten it up and offer victims more support are currently making their way through parliament.

No one knows how many women are victims of domestic violence in Kazakhstan every year. Paradoxically, official statistics (notoriously unreliable on gender violence in most countries) show that the number of reported crimes has fallen since the law was adopted, whereas a rise might have been expected with a new legal mechanism in place.

According to data from the General-Prosecutor’s Office Legal Statistics Committee, there were 783 registered cases in 2012, against 887 in 2009. Last year, 285 women died in domestic-violence-related incidents, according to Gulshara Abdykalikova, head of the National Commission for Women’s Affairs and Family Demographic Policy. Last month, she was promoted to deputy prime minister.

Podrugi representatives suggest that one-fifth of families in Kazakhstan suffer from domestic violence. Meanwhile, the national Statistics Agency’s report on crime against women in 2012 said 13,797 violent crimes against women were registered, “in many cases” incidents of domestic violence.

The stigma of reporting it is great, so “not all women talk about this, they don’t want to air their dirty laundry in public,” Abdykalikova said in February. “Society is very tolerant toward domestic violence,” Tatyana Usmanova of the Center for Supporting Women, an NGO, told a round table in January.

Even when women go to the police, complaints are often dropped for reasons ranging from family pressure to financial dependence on the alleged perpetrator. Some 20,000 women filed police complaints about domestic violence in 2011, Deputy Interior Minister Kayrat Tynybekov told parliament last year. Only a fraction of those initial complaints, however, end up in the official records.

The disparity between the number of reported crimes and the number of women seeking help is huge: In October parliament heard that 37,000 women had sought assistance from special Interior Ministry Units to Protect Women From Violence so far in 2013, and 11,000 had turned to Kazakhstan’s 28 crisis centres.

The conviction rate for domestic violence crimes appears to have fallen since the law was adopted. There were 509 convictions in 2012, against 988 in 2009 – a 48 percent drop that is far greater than the 12-percent fall in reported crimes, although convictions on lesser charges can skew the numbers. Last year 386 people received custodial sentences (76 percent of convictions).

In connection with the annual global Say NO campaign, which began Nov. 25 and concluded Dec. 10, Podrugi lobbied Astana to set up a nationwide network of state-funded shelters for victims of domestic violence. At present, non-governmental organisations operate a patchy network, and some major cities – including Almaty – do not have designated shelters. MPs have spoken out in support of a state role.

“It is important for us human rights defenders who represent women’s rights that the state should play a major role in preventing this violence, and state shelters are therefore really important to us,” Gladyr said. She is confident that Astana is “now listening to us, and they are with us.”

 Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specialises in Central Asia. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Women in the Solomon Islands suffer one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the world. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
AUKI, Solomon Islands, May 30 2013 (IPS)

Selina, a resident of a small community in Malaita, the most populous province in the Solomon Islands, watched in horror as a man standing on the road in front of her house tore the clothing off his wife, then beat her and inflicted wounds with a knife.

“The man kept telling his wife to get up and follow him along the road and every time she fell, he kicked her,” Selina (not her real name) told IPS, recounting the incident that happened earlier this month. “The husband then swore that, according to ‘kastom’ (the traditional value system in the Solomon Islands), no one was allowed to touch this woman or defend her.”

Although the crowd that had gathered at the scene was unwilling to intervene, Selina was not intimidated.

“I have been a victim of domestic violence too, so I felt her pain,” she continued. “I had a feeling that I had to follow this woman; that I could save her.”

Selina pursued the couple alone along the road and took her chance to rescue the woman when the husband walked away for a cigarette. Fleeing through the darkness with the perpetrator in blind pursuit, Selina finally managed to hide the victim in a nearby house before alerting police and medical services.

The husband was arrested and remains in police custody.

In this Western Pacific country comprising over 900 islands, located northeast of Australia and east of Papua New Guinea, there are tales every day of violence and abuse against women.

Entrenched gender inequality has resulted in one of the world’s highest rates of domestic violence, with an estimated 64 percent of women aged 15 to 49 years experiencing violence at the hands of a partner.

But in Malaita Province, 100 kilometres east of the capital, Honiara, women are taking action and saving lives.

In 2011 the Malaita Council of Women urged the ministry of national unity, peace and reconciliation to offer a domestic violence education programme for local women in this province of approximately 140,000 people.

A spokesperson for the Council told IPS that, with 80 percent of the population residing in rural areas with inadequate infrastructure and services, it is vital that women at the grassroots level receive the support and training they need to defend themselves, especially since the only women’s refuge in the country, the Christian Care Centre, is located miles away, in Honiara.

The education programme has generated strategies that include intervening when witnessing family violence, promptly alerting police, assisting the victim to safety and working in partnership with law enforcement officers to visit affected communities and engage people in dialogue about domestic violence as a crime.

Although less than half of the Council’s 500 individual and 30 group members have completed the awareness programme so far, women like Selina have already demonstrated its benefits.

“This workshop changed my life,” she declared. “My views about domestic violence changed and I knew, for the first time in my life, that I could do something about it.”

Stigmas surrounding victims of gender violence, coupled with fear of punishment by male relatives and “retribution”, have forced female survivors into silence.

But Selina’s act of courage earned her much applause and pushed women in the community to call for greater media coverage of such incidents.

Entrenched inequality

Advocates say it will take a long time to change the behaviours and attitudes that have allowed this climate of abuse to prevail.

In a 2008 family health and safety study, many men referred to gender inequality as a “norm”, while 73 percent of both men and women indicated that violence was acceptable if women failed to live up to “traditional roles” of domestic labour and service within the family.

Despite the presence of women in education and formal employment, views that their rightful place is within the domestic sphere remain strong.

Women carry the burden of labour intensive work, such as collecting firewood, water and working in food gardens, and remain underrepresented in public decision-making roles, with currently only one female parliamentarian in the country.

The most recent independent education survey conducted in 2007 by the Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education revealed massive gender gaps in education: 53.8 percent of female respondents aged 15 to 19 years were not enrolled in school, compared to 37.6 percent of males; female literacy stands at 14 percent, in contrast to 21 percent for males.

Domestic violence is now endemic in the country, with the Family Support Centre in Honiara recording up to six cases per day.

“Zero tolerance” for violence

The government recently introduced national polices on eliminating violence against women and on gender equality and women’s development, both of which promote women’s political, social and economic advancement.

The launch of a “zero tolerance” policy on family violence by the police force seven years ago has also supported women’s efforts to see justice.

“When someone reports a domestic violence case, we conduct an investigation and the perpetrator is immediately remanded in custody,” a police spokesperson in the main provincial town of Auki told IPS.

“Even if the victim subsequently asks for the case to be withdrawn, it must still go to court and the magistrate will decide the verdict and sentence.”

The policy has fostered a higher degree of trust for the police force, and resulted in many police officers charged with domestic violence losing their jobs.

Prior to implementation of the policy, only one domestic violence case was reported in Malaita in 2005, but this rose to 18 cases in 2010 and 12 last year, with the majority involving grievous bodily harm and unlawful wounding.

Experts estimate scores of cases go unreported, with victims facing enormous pressure from extended family members, especially in-laws, to remain silent.

“We can no longer stand by and say that domestic violence is not our business. We must take action and intervene to stop it happening,” Selina emphasised.

Fatima Hernández, a Nicaraguan rape victim denied justice in a high-profile case, protesting in front of the Supreme Court in 2011. Credit: Oscar Sánchez/IPS

By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, May 30 2013 (IPS)

Conservative sectors in Nicaragua have launched an offensive against the Comprehensive Law Against Violence Toward Women, seeking amendments including an obligation for women victims to negotiate with their abusers, human rights groups reported.

The Supreme Court (CSJ) decided on May 23 to ask the single chamber legislature reform Law 779, which has been in force since June 2012.

The vice president of the CSJ, Rafael Solís, said the Supreme Court believes it is essential to modify Article 46, which prohibits mediation between women and their assailants for the crimes defined in the law. By changing this it is partially admitting a series of appeals lodged against the law, which included calling for it to be ruled unconstitutional.

The CSJ’s request is a victory for religious groups and other powerful conservative sectors that have waged a steady campaign against the law during the 11 months it has been in force, arguing, for example, that it discriminates against men.

The law stipulates that the state and its institutions have a duty to guarantee the physical, psychic, moral, sexual, patrimonial and economic integrity of women. It also punishes any kind of gender-based discrimination, including femicide (gender-based murders of women).

Solís said the CSJ judges decided by consensus that the law should establish mechanisms for mediation between victims and assailants as an alternative form of conflict resolution, in cases where the alleged crimes carry sentences of less than five years in prison.

Mediation is a legal mechanism in the Nicaraguan justice system for conflict resolution in private law, but not in crimes of public law such as those covered by Law 779. In fact, in family law, mediation is only used in cases of property rights, divorce or separation.

The law was approved by a large majority in parliament and has overwhelming social support, according to opinion polls. It put Nicaragua among the countries with a comprehensive law against gender violence, in line with international conventions.

Since March, when the CSJ began scrutinising the appeals, the debate on the law has reopened, confronting the branches of government, political groups, churches and civil society organisations, especially those defending women’s rights. Protest demonstrations in favour of and against the law have been held in front of the Supreme Court.

Appeals were lodged against the law by legal experts, on the grounds that it violates the principles of equality and presumption of innocence, and enshrines “radical feminist” positions by eliminating mediation in cases of domestic violence.

Bismarck Dávila, one of the five lawyers lodging the appeals, told IPS that the law violates the constitutional principle of equality “because it designates special judges to judge men, while women who commit the same crimes are tried by ordinary judges.”
Law 779 establishes special courts and prosecutors for crimes of gender violence, as well as special police units for women.

According to Dávila, the law also violates the presumption of innocence because from the moment he is accused, “the man is presumed guilty.” He further argued that it violates the right to a defence because “the efforts of public or private defenders are useless in the face of a law that treats men unequally.”

The Asociación Democrática de Abogados de Nicaragua (ADANIC – Democratic Association of Lawyers in Nicaragua) represents men accused under Law 779 free of charge.

The debate has taken on religious overtones after representatives of evangelical churches and the Catholic Church preached from the pulpit against a law that “destroys families by punishing men.”

On May 7, Abelardo Mata, a Catholic bishop, went so far as to say: “The new number of the beast is not 666, but 779.” No clarification or apology has been issued by the Catholic hierarchy.

In parliament, the majority is against amending the law. The first secretary of the legislature, Alba Palacios, recalled that the law was approved by 82 votes out of 92 in February 2012.

In her view, the law should be enforced without amendments, “because before it was approved it was widely debated; all sectors were consulted; and it is the result of those broad consultations.”

Irma Dávila, the chair of the parliamentary Justice Commission, said: “80 percent of the Nicaraguan population supports Law 779, so we cannot say that there is a large majority against the law.”

A survey by the Sistema de Monitoreo de Opinión Pública (SISMO – Public Opinion Monitoring System) carried out Apr. 2-18 found that 82.3 percent of respondents backed the law.

The governing Sandinista National Liberation Front, which holds 63 of the 92 seats in parliament, holds the key to accepting or rejecting the CSJ’s request to modify the law.

If parliament turns down the CSJ’s request, the Supreme Court can alter the way the law is enforced by issuing instructions to judges. In fact, it has already sent out a circular with guidelines for courts to reduce sentences in cases of crimes punishable by less than five years’ imprisonment under Law 779.

Women’s rights groups repudiate the reform, saying that to require mediation between victim and assailant “revictimises women.”

Juana Jiménez of the Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres (MAM – Autonomous Women’s Movement) said femicide statistics for 2012 show why mediation should not be required: 13 out of the 85 women murdered because they were female had entered into mediation with their assailants, after reporting them to the authorities.

“Experience shows that far from solving the problem, mediation only gives men an opportunity to organise their revenge, kill the woman and then flee,” she told IPS.

Amnesty International (AI) issued a press release in support of the law. “The violence perpetrated against women and children is what breaks up families, not legislation designed to help victims escape from violence and hold abusers to account,” said Esther Major, AI’s researcher on Nicaragua.

According to figures from the special police units for women, an average of 97 men per day were reported to the authorities for abusing women in Nicaragua in the first quarter of the year, an increase of 30.7 percent compared to the same period in 2012.

Between Jun. 21, 2012, when the law came into force, and Apr. 28, 2013, 6,482 cases were prosecuted under the law, including 17 femicides. A total of 5,726 alleged assailants were arrested, 1,050 of whom were freed because they were deemed to have only committed misdemeanours.

So far, 692 cases have resulted in conviction and sentencing, and 297 in acquittal, while the remainder remain open.

From the video “One photo a day in the worst year of my life”. Credit: Courtesy of B92 Fund Serbia

By Claudia Ciobanu
BELGRADE, Apr 26 2013 (IPS)

Up to a quarter of women in Europe have experienced domestic violence at some point in their lives, according to the Council of Europe. But despite the widespread nature of the phenomenon, more often than not we ignore it. A short video launched last month in Serbia managed to break this silence.

At first glance, the clip is just another photo-a-day video popularised on YouTube: photos of a smiling young woman follow one another, offering glimpses of different hairstyles and makeup choices.

But after a while the time-lapse video breaks the pattern. The woman’s eyes start looking sad, scared, and her face is covered in increasingly severe bruises and cuts. In the last image, she holds up a sign that issues a desperate call for help.

Before anyone even knew who the woman was or whether the video was genuine or fiction, it became a hit in Serbia and abroad, reaching two million views in just a few days.

It turned out that the film was in fact part of a campaign by the B92 Fund, a foundation associated with the leading private TV channel in Serbia, to raise awareness about domestic violence in this southeast European country.

In Serbia, over 60 women died as a result of domestic violence between the start of 2012 and today, according to the Autonomous Women’s Centre in Belgrade. And women’s groups claim that every second woman has suffered from verbal or physical abuse at some point in time.

“It is important to talk about this problem so that our society on the whole comprehends that it is not normal to beat women, so that women themselves are encouraged to report violence,” explains Veran Matic, the president of the B92 Fund. “Solidarity, getting people to react, and exerting pressure on authorities to take action on domestic violence are also our goals.”

Matic’s foundation has built five shelters for battered women in six years of work on domestic violence, and plans to open two more this year.

Together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the B92 Fund also works on lobbying authorities to better implement legislation providing protection from perpetrators of violence and assistance for victims.

B92 tries to harness the popularity and resources of the television station to meet social needs that are not properly fulfilled by state authorities.

For Danijela Pesic from the Autonomous Women’s Centre, which has worked on violence against women for the past two decades, improving the enforcement of legislation already in place is the most important aspect, as it would offer systematic solutions for victims.

She said that shelters, while important, are merely a short-term emergency response.

The other key to combating domestic violence is changing the culture, says Pesic. “The main cause of domestic violence is patriarchal values,” she says. “It is not poverty, lack of education or alcoholism – we are seeing the same rates of abuse in villages and cities, and across educational and wealth levels.

“Men have to stop believing they can be violent, and for this to happen we need to change our perception of gender roles, starting as early as kindergarten.”

Despite noticing some positive changes in Serbia over the past few years – importantly, women are feeling increasingly empowered – Pesic fears that the lack of systematic state support for actors working in the area of domestic violence might jeopardise progress.

Financing is patchy, often coming in the shape of project-based donations from the West, which inevitably run out without being replaced. As a consequence, for example, call centres for victims are forced to close down after only a few years, just as women are starting to rely on them.

Serbia is not yet a member of the European Union. And as a Balkan country, it has a reputation of being prone to machismo.

Yet the approach to domestic violence in this country is not untypical of the situation across many European countries: optimal legislation is adopted to meet EU standards, but state authorities fail to implement it properly; financing for non-governmental groups working on domestic violence is insufficient; and patriarchal values persist.

A 2012 report by the Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE) network shows that only a third of European countries meet Council of Europe recommendations when it comes to a national free of charge helpline for victims of domestic violence.

In terms of shelter availability, the situation is worse: only five of 46 countries studied offer the necessary number of places, with Central and Eastern European countries performing worse than their Western counterparts.

Many post-socialist countries have started taking measures for preventing domestic violence and assisting victims more intensively only over the past decade. In Estonia, for instance, all of the country’s ten shelters opened in the last five years, financed by a combination of governmental and non-profit sources.

But many women’s groups across the region express doubts over whether the centres and other forms of assistance for victims will be able to continue operating in the future. The already precarious sustainability of the financing is being put under severe strain by the economic crisis.

A 2010 report by Oxfam and the European Women’s Lobby, “Women’s Poverty and Social Exclusion in the European Union at a Time of Recession: An Invisible Crisis?”, quotes NGOs across Central and Eastern Europe declaring that an increasing number of women have been calling helplines and requesting access to shelters since the crisis began.

This information (not yet quantified at the European level) is in line with the general view that economic turmoil leads to an increase in frequency and intensity of domestic abuse.

The same groups are also reporting negative impacts of austerity measures implemented across Europe in response to the crisis: from the closing of shelters in Romania and complaints by Slovakian NGOs that they have been hurt by the withdrawal of foreign donors to Estonian groups arguing they cannot plan for the long term because of a lack of support from local authorities.

EU funds, primarily in the form of the Daphne Programme, which offers financing to many of the women’s rights initiatives across the region, are also under question. The EU’s seven-year budget is getting renewed at the moment and the austerity wave in Europe has already led to an announcement of a reduction of its overall size.

While the European Commission told IPS that it proposed that women’s rights and gender equality programmes receive a similar amount of funding as before (the intended amount is approximately 800 million euros for the next seven years), some fear the fund will be significantly trimmed during further negotiations.

“While the recession and austerity measures are having a detrimental effect on the prevalence of violence against women, they are also having a negative effect on women’s ability to escape the violence,” comments Pierrette Pape from the European Women’s Lobby.

“Women’s economic independence is undermined while public services face funding cuts and cannot therefore provide adequate quality services,” Pape adds. “NGO-led services to support women victims of violence are also threatened by the tendering and marketisation of services, which leaves behind and in isolation many women and girls affected by male violence.”

Several brutal, high-profile murders of women in the last few weeks in El Salvador are just the latest reminder that this is one of the countries in the world with the highest number of femicides, the term used to describe the killing of women because they are female.

The killings are fuelled by impunity, machismo, and the weakness of a state that has failed to understand the magnitude of the problem, according to women’s rights groups consulted by IPS.

“Women are seen as someone’s property; there is an idea that women can be ‘corrected’, and this legitimates violence against us,” Silvia Juárez, a lawyer with the Organisation of Salvadoran Women for Peace (ORMUSA), told IPS.

The most recent cases include the murder of Yuridia Herrera Laínez, 24, on Mar. 28 in
Tonacatepeque, on the north side of San Salvador. Her partner, Luis González, was arrested on charges of firing several bullets at her when she tried to break up with him.

Eight days earlier, in the eastern city of San Miguel, 32-year-old María Carmen Centeno was killed with a machete by her boyfriend, who is at large.

Suyapa del Carmen Villatoro, 37, a Salvadoran-American who had come to El Salvador on vacation, is in the hospital struggling for her life after she was shot on Apr. 1 by gunmen allegedly hired by her husband, José Elías Canesa.

Prosecutors said Canesa, who is in preventive detention, confessed to ordering the hit against his wife. Her friend, 67-year-old Colombian-American Ana Cristina Ramos, was killed in the shooting.

According to the police investigation, Canesa apparently offered the contract killers 36,000 dollars to shoot his wife because she was allegedly unfaithful to him

Another case that has shocked Salvadoran society was the murder of Lida María Huezo, 41, who was shot at point-blank range on Mar. 24 in her home in San Salvador.

Although the evidence points to her husband Manuel Gutiérrez, the manager of one of the country’s biggest car dealerships, a judge released him, citing a technicality.

According to press reports, Gutiérrez was freed thanks to the intervention of the Poma family, one of the country’s wealthiest, who own the company where the suspect works.

“The impunity that has prevailed in this and other cases sends out the message that nothing will happen if you kill a woman here, or that someone with money and influence can easily get away with things,” said Ima Guirola, spokeswoman for the Women’s Studies Institute (CEMUJER).

The Geneva-based independent research project Small Arms Survey places El Salvador at the top of the list of countries for gender-related murders: 12 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to its recent report Femicide: A Global Problem.

However, the 2012 study, based on statistics gathered from 2004 to 2009, does not reflect the drop in the total number of murders in El Salvador, which have been cut nearly in half since a truce was agreed by the two main youth gangs and the authorities in March 2012.

Juárez concurred with Guirola that impunity is one of the main reasons that this Central American nation is at the top of world rankings for violence.

No progress has apparently been made since a law on violence against women – the Ley Especial Integral para una Vida Libre de Violencia para las Mujeres – was passed in January 2012.

The new law creates sentences of up to 50 years in prison for men who commit femicide – 20 more than the maximum sentence for other kinds of murder.

But Ormusa’s statistics indicate that only seven of the 270 cases brought to court since then were classified as femicides, and convictions were achieved in only three of these.

Human rights ombudsman Oscar Luna told the local media that many of these murders involved a previous history of domestic violence, and called for a state policy of prevention.

Guirola said the state should implement an early warning system, where domestic violence cases would be treated as potential femicides. The CEMUJER activist complained that the authorities don’t respond adequately when threats against and mistreatment of women are reported.

Many police officers, judges and other criminal justice officials are not even familiar with the new law, and are resistant to addressing the cases as femicides, which are more specific than homicides, she said.

In fact, several public officials have been charged with domestic violence. The most notorious case was that of legislator Rodrigo Samayoa of the right-wing Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA), who beat his wife, Mireya Guevara, in June 2012.

And six police officers have recently been accused of violence against their wives, girlfriends or partners.

Policeman Oliverio Enrique Rosales killed his wife, Xenia Roxana Mártir, in their home in the western city of Ahuachapán. After he shot her, he killed himself.

The ineffectiveness of institutions like the attorney general’s office, the national civil police or the prosecutor’s office means investigations go nowhere, Guirola added.

“This institutional fragility means many crimes are not adequately investigated, and everything is blamed on gang violence or other kinds of problems that do not reflect what is really happening,” she said.

Lynette Edwards (not her real name) grew up watching her mother being beaten by her partner each night. In high school, Edwards began associating with bullies, thinking this would protect her from being abused; but when she turned 16, two male acquaintances raped her.

At 21, her partner threw her through a glass window, which resulted in several lacerations including wounds on her head that needed stitches. Another time he slashed her lip, which still bears a scar.

“Violence was, and possibly still is, rife in the country towns of Victoria and one lived in fear of being killed as boys and men were armed,” Edwards, 57, told IPS.

“Subjected to repeated psychological torment and physical abuse, I had very low self-esteem,” she added.

Such tales of violence have become all too common — almost every single week, a woman in Australia dies at the hands of a male partner or former partner, often after a history of domestic violence, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.

Almost one in five women have experienced sexual violence and one in three women have experienced physical violence after the age of 15. Of those women, 85 percent were assaulted by a current or former partner, family member, friend or other known male.

Three-quarters of such physical assaults occurred in the woman’s home, according to an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey.

The individual stories surrounding statistics of intimate partner violence offer an insight into how these crimes against women unfold.

Bronwyn Jones (not her real name) had known her boyfriend for five years before she decided to move in with him. Within a week, she was told not to meet male friends, not to wear certain dresses because they “made her look attractive”, and not to visit her parents.

“He had total physical and mental control over me. Once our first child was born I gave up my job and then he had complete financial control as well. He cancelled my credit card, took my phone and totally isolated me from family and friends.

“I was constantly humiliated and sexually abused,” Jones, who put up with the abuse for seven years before moving out with her two infant children, told IPS.

For many women, leaving an abusive relationship, particularly if there are children involved, is very difficult. Most, like Jones, continue to live in constant fear of being attacked by their ex-partner long after they have moved out.

Australia Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick says the problem has reached enourmous proportions.

“We do know that currently there are 1.2 million women living in an intimate relationship characterised by physical violence or have previously done so,” she told IPS.

This number indicates only the “tip of the iceberg” of women’s suffering because, in Australia, “domestic and family violence is much wider than just physical violence, and includes psychological, emotional, spiritual, cultural and economic abuse — so the numbers would be more than that”, she added.

Experts cite gender inequality as the root cause of violence against women. Other contributing factors are alcoholism, unemployment, financial stress and lack of social support for victims.

A thick blanket of silence covers many women’s experiences of abuse and violence. Victims are afraid to speak out or give evidence for fear of reprisals, harassment, intimidation, homelessness and high legal costs.

For many women, even the workplace does not provide a haven from abuse. Nineteen percent of respondents to the 2011 National Domestic Violence and the Workplace Survey said that violence had continued in the workplace, including through abusive phone calls and emails and the perpetrator showing up at the victim’s workplace.

According to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2008 sexual harassment survey, 22 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 64 years have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace in their lifetime.

Slow winds of change

According to Broderick, the last few years have seen a shift in attitudes and levels of tolerance towards violence.

Due to efforts in the last year, “a million workers are now entitled to Domestic Violence Leave outside their industrial agreements so that has been a real significant step forward”, she said.

The Australian Government also formulated a 12-year National Plan (2010-2022) to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. Adopted in March 2011, the plan sets out government goals for “preventing violence by raising awareness and building respectful relationships in the next generation”.

Recently, a National Centre of Excellence was established under the plan, which will provide a central point for researchers, policy makers and practitioners in the fields of domestic, family and sexual violence to link up and provide evidence-based responses and solutions.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has argued that the plan could go further in order to account for diverse contexts and identities, including women with disabilities, migrant and refugee women, women of diverse sex, sexuality and/or gender, and older women.

Research shows that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 45 times more likely to be victims of domestic and family violence and 35 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of family violence-related assaults than non-Indigenous women.

Initiatives to address this grave social issue are urgently needed as domestic and family violence is the leading contributor to death, disability and illness in women aged 15 to 44 years, according to the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation.

“This is unacceptable and clearly as a society we need to look to the development of a more respectful culture towards women: one which says no to violence and recognises the shame on men when they perform acts of violence and abuse on women,” Cathy Humphreys, Alfred Felton chair of child and family social work at the University of Melbourne, told IPS.

Teenage girls are also at risk of gender violence in Ecuador. Credit: Gonzalo Ortiz/IPS

By Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Mar 25 2013 (IPS)

Ecuador hopes to move forward in the fight against violence against women by typifying femicide – gender-motivated killings – as a specific crime in the new penal code.

The first statistics on gender violence in this South American country were presented in 2012, indicating that 60 percent of women had suffered some kind of mistreatment.

The aim now is to include the crime of femicide in the penal code reform introduced in Congress in late 2011. The new code is expected to be approved by the legislature to be sworn in on May 24.

The bill describes femicide as the murder of a woman “because she is a woman, in clearly established circumstances.”

It goes on to describe these circumstances: the perpetrator unsuccessfully attempted to establish or re-establish an intimate relationship with the victim; they had family or conjugal relations, lived together, were boyfriend/girlfriend, friends or workmates; the murder was the result of the “reiterated manifestation of violence against the victim” or of group rites, with or without a weapon.

Femicide is to be punishable by up to 28 years in prison – similar to the sentence handed to hired killers.

What prompted Ecuador to typify the crime of femicide? First of all, the evidence.

Academic studies and police reports indicate that crimes against women have increased sharply. The Metropolitan Observatory of Citizen Security reported 21 femicides in Quito in 2012 and 28 in 2011.

In the most populous city, Guayaquil, on the Pacific coast, of 137 murders of women committed between January 2010 and June 2012, 47 were femicides and just four ended in prison sentences, according to the report “The paths of impunity”, presented Mar. 14 by the Ecuadorean Centre for Women’s Promotion and Action (CEPAM).

Another reason that femicide was classified as a crime was the shockwaves sent out by recent murders of women.

Karina del Pozo, 20, went missing in Quito on Feb. 20. Her body was found eight days later in an empty lot on the north side of the city, showing signs of abuse and a blow to the head that caused her death.

According to the police investigation, she was allegedly killed by three young male acquaintances when she refused to have sexual relations with one of them, after a party which they attended together.

In mid-February, the body of a 16-year-old adolescent girl was found in a burlap sack in the Andean province of Cotopaxi in the centre-north of the country, with signs of sexual violence. And on Feb. 28, 24-year-old Gabriela León was strangled and her body was dumped in a bag in the northern city of Ibarra.

In every case, the suspects or confessed murderers were men.

Thousands of people took to the streets to demand greater security, and the families of victims organised to demand that femicide be classed as a specific crime.

Femicide is “the murder of a girl, teenager or woman because she is a woman or because of the cultural constructions according to which men close to women feel that they have power over them,” left-wing lawmaker María Paula Romo of the opposition party Ruptura 25 told IPS.

Psychologist Angélica Palacios, who specialises in protection from sexual crimes, said “this issue involves power relationships within the family, labour place and social systems.”

Romo said the inclusion of femicide in the new penal code was in response to “the need to visibilise this kind of extreme violence against women, which has characteristics that make it very different from other crimes against life.”

But she said she did not believe that the mere classification of the crime would bring about changes. “Typifying it will not help prevent or avoid it. But this is a tool to raise awareness, to call things by their name, to train and sensitise people in the justice system, and even to obtain statistical information that enables us to work to change things.”

Mauro Andino, who belongs to the party of left-leaning President Rafael Correa and is the chair of the congressional Justice Commission, told IPS that the aim of the penal code reform was to safeguard the rights of women, because “it is different when a woman dies because of a robbery than when she dies as a result of harassment and violence at the hands of her partner.”

According to the National Survey on Family Relations and Gender Violence 2012, of the women who said they had suffered gender violence (60 percent), 76 percent had experienced it at the hands of their current or ex-partners.

The survey also found that two out of five women had suffered physical violence, and one out of four had suffered sexual violence.

Gender violence was present in both cities (61.4 percent) and rural areas (58.7 percent), and it affected women from all socioeconomic levels: both the poorest quintile and the richest quintile had rates above 50 percent.

Ecuador thus follows on the heels of other Latin American countries that have adopted femicide in their legislation: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.

However, in several of those countries – most notoriously Mexico and Guatemala – the classification of femicide as a crime has failed to reduce the wave of violence against women.

Increasingly the issue of domestic violence in Armenia is a topic for public discussion. Yet greater attention to the issue isn’t yet translating into an expansion of programmes to alleviate suffering and address policy shortcomings.

In 2012, Armenia set a grim record for domestic violence when six women, ranging in age from 21 to 50 years old, died over the course of six months in incidents involving their husbands or fathers-in-law. Collectively, the six dead women left behind 12 children.

No official registry of domestic-violence attacks exists in Armenia. But a 2008 survey of 1,000 Armenian women by Amnesty International found that more than three out of 10 had suffered from physical abuse, and 66 percent from psychological abuse.

The outcry over the recent deaths prompted activists to believe that the government would start making state funds available for the protection and treatment of victims of domestic violence. But on Jan. 21, the government blocked passage of what would have been the country’s first domestic-violence law, saying that revisions should be made to existing legislation, or to the bill itself.

In the absence of government funding, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are struggling to meet needs.

“There are many cases, and only NGO efforts do not suffice,” commented Susanna Vardanian, director of the Women’s Rights Center, a Yerevan-based NGO, which is a backer of the stalled draft law.

At present, three private domestic-violence shelters (two in Yerevan and one in the nearby region of Armavir), along with several NGO-run hotlines are all that exist for female domestic violence victims. Over the past two years, the Women’s Rights Centre, which runs two hotlines, four regional crisis centres and one shelter, has received some 2,557 calls from women seeking help, according to Vardanian.

At a facility run by the charitable foundation Lighthouse in the village of Ptghunts, the 55 women residents are mostly unemployed, and either pregnant or raising children. The shelter provides basic job training, as well as psychological counselling.

For decades, domestic violence was a topic that not only battered women, but also officials and law-enforcement authorities shied away from acknowledging or discussing. But now, that has begun to change, with people starting to be held accountable for abusive actions.

For example, Haykanush Mikayelian received a 10-month sentence in 2012 for her role in the abuse of her 23-year-old daughter-in-law, Mariam Gevorgian, over a prolonged period starting in 2009. According to testimony at the trial, Mikayelian burned Gevorgian’s body with an iron and a cigarette lighter, beat her regularly and kept her locked indoors under key.

Although police officers are arguably now more aware of the domestic-violence problem than several years ago, they are often left flummoxed by the lack of state-run shelters and legal mechanisms to prevent ongoing abuse of a woman by a husband or relative.

“As soon as it comes to taking actual steps, we seem to be faced with the same resistance,” remarked Lara Aharomian, director of the Women’s Resource Centre, another Yerevan-based NGO active in addressing domestic violence.

The draft domestic-violence law that the government rejected earlier in January would have tried to strengthen official measures to protect victims by introducing restraining orders and expanding the number of shelters, among other measures.

Activists believe that the six fatal domestic-violence cases in 2012 might have been prevented if Armenia had had a law outlining responses to the abuse, and, correspondingly, providing state assistance for shelters.

“(T)he law proposes the creation of a number of facilities, [and the] training of police, which are preventive measures,” said Anna Nikoghosian, a project manager for the non-governmental organisation A Society Without Violence. If shelters had existed near the homes of the six murdered women, all of whom lived outside of Yerevan, “some . . . might be alive today.”

“There are many badly in need of support, but it is impossible to house all of them in only three shelters,” agreed Lighthouse Director Naira Muradian.

Lala Ghazarian, head of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare’s Department for Family, Women and Childcare Issues, stressed that the domestic-violence bill isn’t gone for good. “It just needs some changes” to bring it into line with existing criminal law, she said. “We are all well aware that we need a law, shelter, trained policemen, functional tools, but it implies extensive work to change legislation, and it will be done.”

Some government members have said that parliament, now controlled by the Republican Party of Armenia, could pass a domestic-violence law by 2014 or 2015, once ongoing amendments to the criminal code are complete.

Meanwhile, as the topic’s stigma fades away, many ordinary Armenians affirm openly that they are eager to find solutions. In the village of Burastan, 30 kilometers outside of Yerevan, women in 2006 told EurasiaNet.org that questions about domestic violence “destroy traditional Armenian families”. Seven years later, they admitted that abuse is an issue that “has to be addressed”.

“Our children have been growing up in an atmosphere of beatings and fights,” commented 67-year-old Karine Galstian, a mother of four. “Only now we realise how wrong it is to keep silent, because we should at least teach our daughters that the husband has to respect his wife, should not beat her, should not humiliate her in front of the children.”

In the absence of further government measures against domestic violence, such realisations could make a critical difference.

Editor’s note: Gayane Abrahamyan is a reporter for ArmeniaNow.com in Yerevan.

This story was originally published by EurasiaNet.org.

Anarkia Boladona has turned the streets of Brazil into billboards against domestic violence. As a self-titled feminist political graffiti artist, she represents a new trend in women’s rights that seeks less academic and more daring and popular avenues of expression.

As the interview begins, Boladona, born Panmela Castro, is painting a mural in front of a municipal school in a Rio de Janeiro suburb, along with other young people.

But unlike in the past, when she began to paint walls as a “pichadora”, or street artist, officials now support her work.

“I had the habit of writing in the streets as a teenager and then I started drawing. When I passed by the drawing next day, I noticed that people liked it and commented on it,” she told IPS.

The artist says she began painting walls “out of indignation”, until she discovered she could use her drawings to “contribute something that could serve my community”, which is a poor suburb of Rio de Janeiro.

“As part of a family of women, one of the issues I perceived was that of violence against women. It was always very present in my life, in that of my sisters, my cousins, my aunts,” she recalls.

The transition to what she calls a “feminist political graffiti artist” was also about her family background: women “influenced by the feminist revolution of the 1970s”.

“At the same time that they were prey to marriage and patriarchy, there were women who understood that everything was walking toward being different. Me and my cousins were raised differently from them,” she adds.

Education was different, as was the path chosen to fight for the rights of women. Today, at 31, she feels part of the feminism of a new generation.

“I think the old feminists had to be very radical to break the stereotypes. That is why they had these strong concepts, like not exploiting the body or even the body image,” she explains.

If in the past they did their bit for a world “without bras”, today these new feminists do not hesitate to remove theirs if it is for a good cause to defend their rights.

“We have advanced so much that our fight is no longer over for example not to explore the body image, but to use your body the way you want, even exposing it. We have the option of working with our brain, our body, in any way that we please,” she says.

The graffitist chose to “work” with her art, with the walls as her instrument. She uses them to portray the tragedies suffered by millions of women. Sometimes graffiti begins with a theatrical play.

The mural that she is doing is against violence toward women. A telephone number indicates where to turn for help.

The Maria da Penha law, passed in 2006 to combat domestic and family violence against women, raised punishment up to prison terms.

A report by the Sangari Institute indicates that a woman is beaten every five minutes in Brazil, and in 70 percent of cases the people responsible for the attacks are boyfriends, husbands, ex-partners or family members.

The themes of Anarkia Boladona’s murals are endless: A female mythical world of flowers, dragonflies, Eves and witches appealing to a world with equal rights in work, culture and sexual freedom.

“I fight mainly for gender equality, that women have the same rights as men. And, when I say rights, not just in law: It is a right of cultural equality as well,” Boladona says.

Silvana Coelho, 23, is involved in the mural. In an atmosphere considered revolutionary like that of the “pichadores”, she knew this to be a cultural struggle.

“It’s a man’s world. I suffered a lot of harassment from the artists themselves. Sometimes they called me to paint, with ulterior motives. But I got angry and told them: ‘I am an artist of the street, I’m not any one of those street women, I’m here to do my art,’” she tells IPS.

As the mural takes shape, the curiosity of men and women passing by is piqued. A group of women, boasting an average age of more than 90, approves of the work.

“Before, it was very difficult for a man to beat a woman. Now there are men who, besides taking their partner’s money, they beat them too, “says 92-year-old retiree Francisca de Oliveira.

A grandfather with his two granddaughters also observes the work. “Some people use this art to denigrate, to demoralise. This art is thought-provoking, educational, on the street, so it is accessible to everyone,” says Mauro Torres, a graphic artist.

“It’s important because there are people who abuse women,” reflects his granddaughter Ingrid da Costa, aged nine. She is part of a generation that, according to Boladona, is experiencing new feminist themes.

The graffiti artist says that in the past, the fight was about sexual freedom. But today, preadolescents and teens from the strong “funk dance culture” of the favelas (crowded slums) feel compelled to have sex, because “if they don’t their boyfriend leaves for another”.

“There is a role reversal. Before, the obligation was to maintain virginity. Today, the obligation is to no longer be a virgin,” she observes.

Sometimes the walls are inadequate for tackling so many issues. So Boladona founded an organisation called “Nami”, a play on the word “mine” that in carioca slang means woman.The organisation uses urban arts to promote the rights of women, especially the poorest.

Daniele Kitty, art student and vice president of Nami, had to face her parents, who do not accept “a woman walking around painting,” when “in truth I am here working as you can see,” she says.

Nami uses its work to reach women who do not even have access to a newspaper.

“You cannot just ignore a mural like this. It ends up being almost like a TV commercial, a subliminal message that you watch again and again as you pass. It stays in your head,” she maintains.

The unfolding mural calls for “an end to violence against women.” A woman, painted like a flower by Coelho, complements the work.

“A woman is sacred, a flower to be cared for, not to hurt. You have to nourish it with water, but also with love,” she says.

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 18 2012 (IPS)

“Child abuse merits a different, in-depth approach. The objective of this film is to make the problem visible and promote debate and reflection,” says Eric Corvalán, director of a documentary that required “breaking through walls.”

In the film “No es el camino” (This is not the way), prominent Cuban experts discuss child abuse. Social issues are nothing new to Corvalán. In 2008 he premiered “Raza” (Race), about the no-less thorny issue of racial discrimination.

That documentary won a number of awards, including the David Prize awarded by the University of Oriente, for its contribution to education. However, it has yet to be shown on Cuban television.

Eric Corvalán: “The 1975 family code was once cutting-edge, but it is now out-of-date.” Credit: Patricia Grogg/IPS

“When I asked why (it hasn’t been shown), they told me that it was a controversial issue, and that our society wasn’t ready to see it on television. If that was the case with ‘Raza,’ then I imagine that the same thing will happen with ‘No es el camino’,” the independent filmmaker, who is a member of the Cuban Audiovisual Association (ACAV), told IPS in this interview.

His documentary premiered in Havana on Sept. 25 as a demonstration of the commitment by the Oscar Arnulfo Romero Reflection and Solidarity Group to the U.N. secretary-general’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign, which celebrates Orange Day on the 25th of each month.

Q: Why child abuse and not another issue for your second documentary?

A: Because it is an issue that has hardly been addressed. If we acknowledge that domestic violence exists, then we need to know what is going on with the children, who suffer the most. They cannot defend themselves, and they are subject to that violence in different ways: physical, psychological and sexual. Walking through the city, I have seen mothers and fathers who abuse their children in public.

Q: Where does this problem occur?

A: Mostly within the family. The abuser may be an uncle, a cousin, the mother or the father. They scold the child, use disparaging language, or shake or pull the child – as if these were educational methods. That’s why I made the documentary, for children and also for parents, other relatives and the world in general.

The documentary makes it clear that many institutions are working on this issue, but there is no follow-up on cases and no specific law exists. The Penal Code includes a very general reference to the normal development of children and women.

Q: But there is a Family Code.

A: That legislation dates back to 1975. Since then, three generations have gone by…and it hasn’t been changed. In its time, it was very advanced, but now it’s not. Child abuse merits an in-depth approach. For example, in situations of economic crisis, social inequalities increase and children are the most vulnerable.

Q: The documentary brings together a good group of specialists on the matter, but does not include the testimony of any children. Why?

A: They are not in the documentary directly, because in Cuba, if you don’t have official authorisation you can’t interview a child and place him or her onscreen. The objective of this material was to make the phenomenon visible and to protect children. Before interviewing the specialists, I visited several communities in the city and talked to many boys and girls. I realised that the problem is cause for concern.

Children are very sincere, and you can find out about anything talking to them. Both boys and girls are very sensitive and they feel and suffer from problems without having anybody to turn to.

There is no infrastructure in Cuba where children can go and make a complaint. What is needed is a daily education campaign, teaching parents how to listen to their children and to know about their obligations to them.

Q: Do you feel that child abuse should not exist in a society like Cuba’s?

A: When we talk about violence in Cuba, we immediately begin comparing it to other countries, as a defence mechanism. There is less violence here than in other places, but it does exist. “A single boy or girl who is mistreated in this country is a serious problem for us,” said one of the people interviewed, Dr. Cristóbal Martínez, of the national children’s psychiatry group.

Our society is machista. We are violent and loud, but at the same time we are very humane and have a high educational level. These are tremendous contradictions, and in the face of a phenomenon like this, you wonder why it exists and what is being done to solve it.

Q: The documentary premiered in September. Why hasn’t it been screened since?

A: In May 2013, it will compete in the Santiago Álvarez (documentary film festival) in Santiago de Cuba. It will also be shown in international festivals in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, France, Canada, and the United States. Moreover, I hope that it will be used as a tool for studies by international and Cuban organisations.

Q: What was your greatest challenge in taking on such a sensitive social issue?

A: The main challenge was simply to do it – that is, to break through the walls of censorship and fear. I’m using these big words because making a film about violence of any kind is very difficult. Another main challenge now is for people to see it, and discuss and debate it. The idea of issues being discussed is now being promoted in our country, including at the level of the state.

Excerpt:

By Julia Kallas
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 2012 (IPS)

When Shorai Chitongo founded Ray of Hope, a support group for female survivors of domestic violence in 2005, she discovered that three-quarters of the survivors in the group were HIV-positive.

Shorai Chitongo, founder of Ray of Hope, a support group for survivors of domestic violence, and a national leader of the Groots Zimbabwe Home-Based Care Alliance. Photo courtesy of Ms. Chitongo

“Women’s assertiveness and high self-esteem are important ingredients to fight HIV/AIDS,” Chitongo, a grassroots leader who fights to empower and protect communities in Zimbabwe and is a national leader of the Groots Zimbabwe Home-Based Care Alliance, told IPS. Domestic violence directly increases chances of sexually transmitted infections that expose women to HIV.

“If women are assertive enough, they are able to negotiate safe sex as equal partners and not as subordinates,” Chitongo explained.

IPS correspondent Julia Kallas spoke with Chitongo about the links between sexual violence and HIV/AIDS and how women’s grassroots efforts can promote HIV care and support.

Q: In 2005, your domestic violence case captured national media attention and sympathy. What spurred you to found Ray of Hope? What kind of program does Ray of Hope have to support HIV-positive women?

A: The formation of Ray of Hope dates back to 2005, when l saw a documentary on a local TV program and learned that the organisation Girl Child Network was offering loans to women under its Community Empowerment and Development Program.

Perceiving this as my only opportunity to disentangle myself from the jaws of domestic violence, which l thought was a result of economic dependency on my husband, l decided to approach GCN. The staff there referred me to a woman named Betty Makoni, as they felt that my case was too dangerous for them, since my husband was violent and lawless.

Betty was greatly touched by my story and that of my three children, who ended up on the streets while l was in hiding for one and a half years in neighbouring Botswana. Previously, I had unsuccessfully approached various women’s organisations and law enforcers but had lost hope. Not even my close relatives were afraid to shelter me in their homes. But Betty offered me sanctuary in rural Mutasa.

While I was living there, a local woman was brutally murdered by her husband in full view of their three children. This incident made me realise that l was not the only survivor of domestic violence; there were other cases out there that went unreported. With Betty’s support, l gained the courage to mobilise other women survivors of domestic violence to form a support group, which provided the space to talk about their concerns away from their male-dominated homes.

The result was an influx of women with shocking stories of abuse. Women travelled more than 30 kilometres bare-footed just to pour out what had burdened them for years. Most disturbing about these desperate women was that they did not bear domestic violence alone but with their children. Sadly, their children were the major reason for their silently enduring abusive and life-threatening relationships.

These meetings transformed the women. They went from being silent victims to a group that was determined to change their lives.

During one of our meetings, we discovered that three-quarters of the women in our group, which had over 100 members, were HIV-positive and that almost all members of the group were in primary and secondary community care work. We then agreed that every program that we were going to implement should mainstream HIV/AIDS.

Q: As a representative of caregivers as a leader of the Groots Zimbabwe Home-Based Care Alliance, what do you believe is needed to improve women and girls’ access to HIV prevention information, technologies, and services by 2015?

A: What is required is the formulation of deliberate policies at national level to provide women with access to information technology relevant for the dissemination of HIV/AIDS information. Creating information centres in rural and peri-urban rural areas would help to give women this access. People should also organise themselves into groups and seek access to computers and other IT facilities.

HIV/AIDS information should cross all women’s groups: political, social, religious, economic and cultural. Education in our country should focus on promoting knowledge of relevant information to deal with HIV/ AIDS, especially in rural areas where literacy rates are lower.

(Click here to watch a video of Chitongo and other members of the Home-based Care Alliance sharing personal stories about the work they do.)

Q: What message would you like to pass to the international community on World AIDS day?

A: While the world accepts and appreciates that HIV/AIDS is a universal problem, it also has to recognise that some social groups are predisposed to catching it due to social, economic and cultural conditions. The more disempowered one is culturally, socially and economically, the more one is exposed to infection.

The world’s attention should now focus on addressing social inequalities on the basis of gender, religion and economics so everybody has equal access to the means through which HIV/AIDS can be combated.

Q: Is there a close link between HIV/AIDS and domestic violence in Zimbabwe?

A: Yes. HIV-positive women are at great risk of all forms of domestic violence. The situation becomes even more complex when they fall chronically ill because their husbands neglect them or send them back to relatives to be cared for or to die, but in most cases their relatives will not accept them.

In addition, women are blamed for bringing HIV home, so they are constantly shunned, stigmatised, violently divorced and in some cases sent away. HIV-positive women also encounter violence when negotiating with their partners for safe and protected sex.

Dietary requirements for HIV positive women also normally result in conflict and misunderstanding, which then lead to violence, and their decision to cease childbearing leads to domestic violence as well.

Q: What needs to be done to help women make safe sex choices and breaki the norm of constantly submitting to men’s sexual whims?

A: Knowledge creates power, assertiveness and high self-esteem. It is necessary to deliberately focus on female empowerment through education so that women approach problems with confidence. If women become more aware of their rights, they will approach the problem of submitting to men’s whims with more vigour to resolve it.

In addition, enacting policies giving equal opportunity in social and economic life regardless of gender will build women’s assertiveness. Men have the advantage of power behind them, but give women equal access to that power and they will not submit to men’s whims.

Excerpt:

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Oct 2 2012 (IPS)

“We have to expand the sense of urgency and indignation towards gender violence,” Dr. Ana Güezmes, UN-Women regional director for Mexico, Central America, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, told IPS on a recent visit to the Cuban capital.

Güezmes says that to bring about change, young people and men must be drawn into the “historic cause” against domestic violence.

UN-Womensays violence against women and girls is a problem of “pandemic proportions.” Based on country data, it reports that up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime.

Ana Güezmes took part in programming the U.N.’s work in Cuba for the 2014-2018 period. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS.

On her visit last week to Havana, Güezmes told IPS about the challenges, advances and setbacks in the fight against domestic violence and the regional response to the global call for action “Say NO – UNiTE to End Violence against Women”, launched in 2008 by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Q: Tell us about the UNiTE campaign.

A: It’s a call to countries to join the cause, not just a media campaign. It’s based on three fundamental pillars: ending impunity, prevention, especially in education and culture, and fomenting shared responsibility of all social actors.

We want to foment the sense of urgency and indignation towards abuse, together with other alliances.

And the actions are mushrooming. For example, on Nov. 25 the U.N. commemorates
the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which marks the start of 16 days of activism to raise awareness about the serious problem of gender violence, until Dec. 10, Human Rights Day.

Now the UNiTE Global Youth Network is carrying out the Orange Day campaign, to dedicate every 25th of the month to the issue.

Q: What are the priorities identified by Mexico, Central America, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, within UNiTE?

A: Central America and the Dominican Republic have established three urgent lines of action: against femicide (gender-based murders of women), the situation of migrants, and visibilising the question of sexual violence. They also put a priority on approaching the issue of violence as an expression of inequality, closely related to the social insecurity of their populations.

Murders of women have taken on an outrageous magnitude in these countries, although I believe that one single case should be enough to make us feel outraged and prompt us to do something. For example, femicide in the Dominican Republic mainly occurs within the family.

The reality of migrants is worrisome because of the strong impact of sexual exploitation and trafficking on women migrants. More than 80 percent of the victims of these crimes in the region are women.

In Cuba, the aim is to bring about a collective response to gender violence on the part of all social sectors. And to improve women’s access in the economy, within the current process of updating Cuba’s economic model.

Q: How can the younger generations and men in particular be incorporated in this global call to action?

A: Young people are the solution. They have many cultural and educational advantages, and they can help build a society with an egalitarian culture within the broad ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity of Latin America. Using art, music and culture, they are helping to say “no” to violence against women.

Achieving their participation is essential for the campaign. Young people and women are last in line when it comes to access to management and decision-making positions, property, employment or productive resources.

The campaign launches a special call for men to join in the fight, with a strong voice. For example, an Ecuadorean initiative says “Machismo kills” and another, in Mexico, says “A brave man isn’t violent”.

Q: What regional initiatives are being implemented to gather statistics on gender violence?

A: In the last 20 years, Latin America has made progress in measuring gender violence and gender stereotypes. Several countries have created modules, others have carried out surveys, and some have even included questions on the issue in more general surveys. In addition, U.N.-Women works with the statistical institutes of countries in the region to provide guidance on studies of this kind.

Violence against women tends to happen within the home and at the hands of people who are close. For that reason, a large number of cases never reach the public services. According to a study carried out by U.N.-Women in five European countries, fewer than 10 percent of women report crimes of sexual violence.

For that reason, studies are needed among the population to document the problem and standardise the records – in other words, for the data collected by the police, community associations and prosecutors’ offices, among others, to speak to each other.

The patterns of discrimination that persist in societies despite gender equality laws and policies must also be monitored.

Q: All countries in this area have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Has progress been made on this front? What factors could lead to setbacks?

A: There have been advances. Many countries have great potential in terms of cultural management, to bring about further change. But it is still a problem of great concern.

Violence is the tip of the iceberg of the inequality and discrimination that women suffer. The achievements made by a society in terms of gender equality can be threatened or rolled back by economic crises, natural disasters or wars. One example of this is the rise in femicides in several countries of Central America and in Mexico.

The changes have to be political and at the same time, culturally sustainable. We live in a very difficult cultural context in economic, energy and climate terms. Women, especially young women and girls, have to participate in the debate on the challenges, and have to form part of the solutions.

Excerpt:

Many Palestinian women face high levels of domestic violence. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours/IPS.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Aug 16 2012 (IPS)

After the brutal murder of a Palestinian woman in late July in a busy Bethlehem marketplace, local human rights groups are pushing for stronger reforms to stem violence against women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“We have problems with the existing laws,” Maysoun Ramadan, director of the Mehwar Centre, the West Bank’s only women’s shelter told IPS. “I think also we need to work more on raising awareness towards women’s rights. We have a problem with the mentality, the culture, we have a lot of previous constructions about women which need to be changed.”

Nancy Zaboun, a 27-year-old mother of three, was violently killed by her husband on Jul. 30 in Bethlehem. The murder took place after Zaboun left a divorce hearing. Her husband had reportedly beaten her regularly over the course of their ten-year marriage.

On Jul. 18, the body of another woman was taken to Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Palestinian police have reportedly arrested two of the woman’s relatives in connection with the killing, which is suspected to have been carried out to preserve “family honour”.

In 2010, the Independent Commission for Human Rights documented the cases of nine women who had been killed for this same reason – to preserve “family honour” – in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In addition to these “honour killings,” a 2009 study published by the Gaza-based Palestinian Women’s Information and Media Centre found that 67 percent of Palestinian women reported being subjected to verbal violence on a regular basis, 71 percent to psychological violence, 52.4 percent to physical violence and 14.5 percent to sexual violence.

“When women come to the shelter, they come in a very dramatic way. They have been abused and subjected to different types of violence for many years. They lost their confidence. They are sometimes aggressive, sometimes suicidal, sometimes in depression. They have nightmares,” Ramadan told IPS.

“They are all the time dependent on someone else and don’t believe in themselves. We try to help them to see their capacities and to raise their motivation to break this cycle.”

In January 2011, the Palestinian Authority (PA) passed a National Strategy to Combat Violence against Women for the period 2011-2019. The programme aims to create work training and empowerment programmes for women, provide social support, and promote a legal framework to stem violence.

“Our aim and target was to eliminate all forms of violence, no matter what kind of violence, against Palestinian women,” Rahiba Diab, the PA’s Minister of Women’s Affairs, told IPS from her Ramallah office.

“There is a serious commitment from the PA to support all the issues related to women, and not to forget about the violence that comes from the critical political situation that we’re living under as Palestinians,” Diab said.

In May 2011, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a presidential decree to suspend two laws: Article 340 of the Jordanian penal code of 1960, in effect in the West Bank, and Article 18 of the British Mandatory law of 1936, which is enforced in Gaza.

Article 340 granted a man exemption from prosecution and reduced penalties for killing his wife or other female relative if she is caught committing adultery. Article 18 provided leniency for the same crime if a man can prove that he acted in order to preserve his honour or the honour of others.

But various human rights groups have pointed to the fact that the PA left other tenets of the law in place, which allow for violence against women to continue unpunished.

Articles 97, 98, 99, and 100 of the Jordanian penal code deal with mitigating circumstances can be used to justify “honour killings,” – Article 98 allows perpetrators to avoid punishment if they can prove that they acted in a “state of rage”.

“The existing law still allows for women to be killed, still allows for impunity,” said Tahseen Elayyan, head of the ‘Protection of women in armed conflicts’ project at the Ramallah-based Al Haq human rights organisation.

“In order to take practical steps towards protecting women, especially from the so-called honour killing, the law must be changed, and perpetrators of this type of killing must be held accountable,” Elayyan told IPS.

According to a report released in December 2011 by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, “high levels of poverty, unemployment and related frustration have contributed to an increase in tension, and ultimately violence, within families” in the occupied Palestinian territories.

This is especially true in the Gaza Strip, where the increasingly harsh economic and social conditions created by the Israeli siege have translated into violence against women, according to Mona Shawa, head of the women’s unit at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza City.

“Gaza is under a closure. The economic situation is very bad. There is a high percentage of poverty and unemployment. There is frequent violence from Israeli attacks. All of these circumstances affect the level of violence against women,” Shawa told IPS.

She explained that while putting laws in place to protect women against violence is a much-needed first step, raising awareness on the rights of women and changing attitudes within Palestinian society is crucial.

“Most important is the community and the culture. We still have a culture which is based on discrimination against women. We still have a culture that sees women as not equal to men. This encourages violence against women,” Shawa said.

“Working on that as a government, as civil society…a joint effort must be made for all this to change.”