A moment of silence in held in Washington, DC May 6th for the 234 missing Nigerian school girls who were abducted by Boko Haram on Apr. 14. Credit: Senate Democrats/cc by 2.0

By Michelle Tullo
WASHINGTON, May 15 2014 (IPS)

Amidst intensifying concern over the fate of more than 200 girls abducted by a radical Islamist group in northern Nigeria, at least 100 representatives of various activist groups Tuesday pressed the U.S. Senate to approve legislation designed to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls and discourage child marriages around the world.

Introduced by a bipartisan group of senators last week, the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) would use existing foreign aid to achieve the bill’s major aims and mandate greater coordination of existing U.S. government programmes that address gender-based violence.A 10 percent reduction in child marriages could lead to a 70 percent reduction in infant mortality, according to the activist group Girls Not Brides.

“If passed, it would mean there would be enduring legislation and policy in place by the U.S. government towards violence against women that would not be based on the politics of any particular administration,” Jacqueline Hart, vice president for strategic learning, research, and evaluation at American Jewish World Service (AJWS), told IPS.

AJWS, an international development and human rights group, helped organise the activist lobbying.

IVAWA is no stranger on the Hill; its previous version was shelved as a result of right-wing Republican concerns that it could be used to support abortions and other women’s reproductive rights. The latest version was introduced in the House of Representatives late last year, where it was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Gender-based violence is one of the world’s most prevalent human rights abuses, and has one of the greatest degrees of impunity surrounding it, according to the activist groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

At least one in three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime, according to U.N. Women.

“This Act makes ending violence against women and girls a top diplomatic priority,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said in a press statement.

“The world has just seen an appalling example of women and girls being treated as property and political bargaining chips in Nigeria, where the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped nearly 300 school girls and is threatening to sell them into slavery and forced marriages.

“Sadly, this is not a viewpoint limited to terrorist leaders: the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) says one in nine girls around the world is married before the age of 15, a harmful practice that deprives girls of their dignity and often their education, increases their health risks, and perpetuates poverty.”

Child brides in rural Senegal at work. Marriage before the age of 18 is a generally common practice in Senegal, with 16 percent of young women getting married and give birth before reaching 15. Credit: Issa Sikiti da Silva/IPS

Indeed, in addition to supporting programmes designed to support national legislation criminalising violence and abuse of girls and women, to provide training to police, prosecutors, and judges to handle such cases, and expand health facilities for women and girls, the bill would support projects aimed at offering girls and women more choices in life, particularly in education and economic opportunity, particularly in countries where early marriage is commonly practiced.

About 14 million girls are married before the age of 18 every year, according to Girls Not Brides. The largest proportion of early marriages occurs in Africa’s Sahel region.

In Niger, some 75 percent of girls are married early, followed by the Central African Republic and Chad. Early marriages occur in every region of the world, with the largest number in India.

According to UNIFEM, 64 million girls are child brides worldwide.

Early marriages inflict abuse on girls and women in many ways, from sexual violence to poor health.

They also increase the chance of physical or sexual abuse in a relationship. In Ethiopia, 81 percent of child brides describe their first physical experience as forced.

The issue is also tied to development. A 10 percent reduction in child marriages could lead to a 70 percent reduction in infant mortality, according to the activist group Girls Not Brides.

The lobbying day on Capitol Hill followed a policy summit hosted Monday by AJWS that featured new research on early marriage undertaken by Nirantar, an Indian feminist resource group.

The research, not yet formally published, focuses less on the appropriate age for marriage than on the role played by the institution of marriage in India’s social structure.

“When we talk about early marriage, it is always the early part we talk about, but what about the marriage part?” asked Archana Dwivedi, deputy director of Nirantar. “What is magic about the age 18?

“We often used child marriage as synonymous for forced marriage, but that is not the case,” she told IPS. “All marriages under 18 are not forced, and all marriages above 18 are not chosen. Imagine a gay boy married to a girl or a lesbian girl married to a man? It can be equally, if not more traumatic, because marriage is also license to have sex.”

Focusing on the age of 18 also diverts attention from girls over 18 who are still suffering the consequences of marrying young, she said. Although often overlooked, these consequences extend beyond the physical health of the women.

“There is too much focus on maternal health, which reinforces the patriarchal thinking that women are there to reproduce healthy children….What about her mental health, how she feels? After marriage, all the opportunities in her life are a given…there is nothing left in life to dream of or desire.”

Dwivedi argued that organisations working to end child marriages need to apply different indicators in assessing the effectiveness of their work.

While many organisations report how many early marriages they helped prevent or delay, they often fail to address the necessity of changing social and cultural attitudes about early marriage, as well as the institution itself.

Acceptance of conventional explanations for early marriage, such as blaming it on poverty, is unlikely to change long-prevalent attitudes.

Focusing on expectations surrounding marriage itself, on the other hand, will more likely lead to a broader range of choices for girls and women and thus empower them.

“Even in urban upper class families, a parent will spend half the family’s money on the education of the son and half on the marriage of the daughter,” she said.

“The attitude is that parents think marriage is the only viable solution for girls…Parents are working with the best intentions to help get their child settled, not doing it to ruin their lives, but to stabilise them. But there’s something wrong with our idea of stability.”

Women protest insecurity and living conditions at a tent camp in central Port-au-Prince, January 2011. Credit: Ansel Herz/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 2013 (IPS)

The U.S. Congress is being urged to pass “urgent” legislation that would make issues of violence against women and girls a key focus in all U.S. diplomatic efforts.

The last such proposal, in 2010, was voted down on conservative concerns. But on Thursday lawmakers, activists and development workers kicked off a new campaign to push through pending legislation that would require diplomats to address issues related to violence against women when dealing with their counterparts around the world, in addition to altering how the United States allocates its development funding."If we say it is important for governments to make certain changes before they can receive full funding, our colleague countries will adopt similar polices.” -- Ruth Messinger

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced the bill, the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA), in the U.S. House of Representatives late last month. The legislation would place the United States in a global leadership position on violence against women, for the first time bringing together U.S. efforts on the issue at a global level.

“We strongly believe that this law would send a signal … that ending violence against women is a permanent goal for the world,” Wangechi Wachira, executive director of the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness in Nairobi, told journalists Thursday.

“This act will help organisations that do most of this work at the community level. It also means that Americans will be … focusing on issues very dear to us – issues of our mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, all around the world.”

Supporters say the law’s passage would be felt by grassroots groups such as Wachira’s, as well as in the hallways of governments in both donor countries and developing nations.

“In many of the countries where we work, there is no legislation of any sort like this, despite immense problems of violence against women and no place for victims of any kind to bring their cases forward,” Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development and rights group, told IPS.

“The United States is the largest donor compared to other Western nations in terms of the funding it gives, so that makes it particularly important for the U.S. to target aid to sensitive issues. If we say it is important for governments to make certain changes before they can receive full funding, our colleague countries will adopt similar polices.”

Educate, embolden

Around the world, rates of violence against women and girls remain astoundingly high. Statistically, one in three women will be abused, beaten or raped during her lifetime, while up to 70 percent of women in some countries are thought to experience some form of abuse.

For many, the experience begins very young. Despite child marriage being widely outlawed, some 10 million girls are still estimated to enter into early or forced marriage each year.

Messinger suggests that, even as a mere proposal, IVAWA will be able to embolden some grassroots groups working on women’s rights issues.

“In many of these places there may a law on the books that suggests equality for women and specifically addresses such violence, but in too many cases that law isn’t known about or isn’t enforced,” she says.

“In many cases, grassroots activists don’t know enough or don’t have the resources to move the issue forward … knowing that a bill like this is before the U.S. Congress and that it may influence how the United States gives out its funding will make a difference for activists on the ground in getting their government to take more steps to address the problems.”

The new discussion around IVAWA comes as the administration of President Barack Obama has substantially stepped up its own institutional commitments to women’s global security.

Last year, the federal government released the United States’ first ever national strategy on preventing global gender-based violence, aimed at coordinating U.S. action on the issue. This year the president created a new department, the ambassador-led Office of Global Women’s Issues, which IVAWA would now make permanent.

Indeed, IVAWA is seen as a central requirement in terms of actually implementing many of the goals set out in the national strategy.

“President Obama has shown extraordinary leadership on this issue, but we can do more – we need to institutionalise a comprehensive approach,” Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House of Representatives and a primary author of the IVAWA proposal, told journalists Thursday.

“This act would require the implementation of a comprehensive U.S. strategy to prevent and respond to violence internationally, including rule-of-law reforms, civil and criminal protections, new educational opportunities, and the promotion of economic opportunities for women.”

Health + women

IVAWA was originally proposed in 2007 but has since failed repeatedly to receive the necessary approval, due exclusively to concerns on the part of conservative lawmakers. Likewise, passage of similar domestic legislation passed last year only by a slim margin, causing contentious rifts among Republicans.

Last month, Schakowsky told the media that Republicans “are hesitant about seeing … health and women in the same sentence – they’re concerned that abortion is somehow involved, which it is not.”

Yet Schakowsky and other supporters are more optimistic about the ability of the new proposal – which has been tweaked around Republican concerns – to draw broad bipartisan support. For one, the IVAWA proposal wouldn’t require any additional federal funding.

In addition, a spate of high-profile stories, including the series of atrocious rape cases in India, has brought unique focus to the issue of women’s abuse over the past year. Such accounts have mobilised an unusual level of public outrage across the globe, including here in the United States.

Schakowsky is also urging conservatives to look at the issue of violence against women not just from a humanitarian perspective but also as an important security concern, including for the United States.

“The most dangerous places to be a woman are also some of the most unstable,” she said Thursday. “Securing women’s rights strengthens entire communities and takes a critical step towards promoting global stability.”

Supporters are now stepping up pressure on the U.S. Senate to draft companion legislation, which they hope will be voted upon by both houses after the New Year.