Survivors of gender-based violence need dignity for themselves and their families. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS.

By Natalia Linou
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 24 2017 (IPS)

Physical injuries are some of the more visible, and at times most deadly, consequences of gender-based violence (GBV). But the long-term mental health consequences are often invisible and left untreated. Similarly, the reproductive and sexual health needs of survivors from rape and sexual violence – to reduce the risk of HIV and STIs, unwanted pregnancies and unsafe terminations, and long-term reproductive complications – are often unmet, stigmatised and under-reported.

But it is not only health needs which must be met. GBV is a consequence and reflection of structural inequalities that threaten sustainable development, undermine democratic governance, deepen social fragmentation and threaten peace and security. This week, UNDP and the Republic of Korea hosted an event at the 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women on “Gender-based violence, health and well-being: Addressing the needs of women and girls living in crisis affected context” bringing together government officials, practitioners, and academics.

A common message emerged: survivors need dignity for themselves and their families, they need immediate health services and legal services, livelihood support and economic empowerment. Multi-sectoral approaches which can meet these distinct, but inter-connected, needs are often the most effective. Research has demonstrated co-benefits of combining economic and health interventions, including for the reduction of intimate partner violence. However, even where services are available, serious barriers to accessing them exist. As Ambassador Oh Youngju of Korea stressed: “survivors of violence are often deterred from seeking help or reporting the incidents due to stigma and a lack of accessible services or ways to report safely, receive help and be treated with dignity”.

And the data can be daunting. Deputy Minister Wardak of Afghanistan shared some sobering statistics from her country: almost one in two women age 15-49 reporting physical violence in the last 12 months, with the majority who have experienced physical or sexual violence (61%) not seeking help or telling anyone about the violence.

So is there any room for optimism?

Kelly, director of the Women and War program of Harvard’s Humanitarian Initiative, stressed that while conflict is a time of trauma, it is also a time of potential transformation. Changing social norms which perpetuate violence can be linked to peace and recovery processes. And successful initiatives can be scaled up. UNDP’s Dhaliwal, shared some good practices. In South Sudan, UNDP is working in partnership with the Government, the Global Fund and the International Organization for Migration to address gender-based violence as part of mental health and psychosocial support programmes. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, UNDP supported the establishment of multipurpose community centres, where survivors of GBV are provided with legal assistance and offered livelihoods training, after medical and psychosocial treatment is given by other partners. And in Afghanistan, efforts to increase the number of female healthcare workers, while not directly focused on survivors of violence, can offer culturally appropriate services and safe-spaces.

Tatsi, Executive Director in the Office for the Development of Women in Papua New Guinea shared both successes – strong alignment across civil society and government in bringing about a coherent strategy to end GBV, and challenges – the need for additional financial and technical support and called on donors to work with government for long-term, sustainable, and transformational change. And Devi of UNFPA stressed how a “continuum approach” is necessary across prevention and response efforts, as well as across the humanitarian-development nexus.

Ending GBV, and particularly violence against women and girls is an important end itself. It is also critical for the achievement of all the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 3 -Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages, and the commitment to ‘leave no one behind.’ While more evidence on preventing violence and supporting survivors is needed, the time for action is now.

Excerpt:

A billboard in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir promotes gender equality and protests violence against women. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Jul 17 2015 (IPS)

Rizwana* had hoped and expected that justice would be served – that the man who raped her would be sufficiently punished for his crime. Months after she suffered at his hands, however, the perpetrator remains at large.

"We receive 1,000 to 1,500 complaints of domestic violence annually." -- Gulshan Akhtar, head of Srinagar’s only women’s police station
Hailing from a poor family in the northwestern part of the Indian administered state of Kashmir, Rizwana worked hard to finish her studies, knowing that if she landed a job it would help ease her family’s financial woes.

When an official in the frontier Kupwara District hired her as an assistant earlier this year, she thought she had struck gold. But she quickly discovered that the man’s support and eagerness to offer her a job was simply a front for ulterior motives.

“After working in the office for just a few days he summoned me to a room on the upper floor and bolted the door. Then he made sexual advances on me. When I objected to his behaviour, he forcibly raped me,” the young graduate told IPS.

Her entire family was traumatised by the experience; Rizwana quit her job and her mother suffered a panic attack that confined her to the hospital for weeks

Rizwana approached the State Women’s Commission (SWC) in Srinagar, the state’s summer capital, and pleaded that the official be terminated from his position and sent to jail.

“But so far nothing has happened,” she said. “While the women’s commission is supporting me, the rapist is yet to be brought to justice as he uses his influence to get away with the crime.”

Militarisation breeds impunity

Anyone who follows the daily headlines in this heavily militarised territory in northern India knows that Rizwana’s case is not unusual. Every year, thousands of women experience sexual or physical abuse, both in and outside their homes, though few come forward to report it.

Women’s rights advocates blame the conflict in Kashmir – which dates back to the 1947 partition of India and has claimed 60,000 lives in six decades – for nursing a culture of impunity that makes women extremely vulnerable to gender-based violence.

In 2007, the Indian government revealed that it had 337,000 army personnel stationed in the region. At the time, this amounted to roughly one soldier for every 18 persons, making Kashmir “the most heavily militarised zone” in the world, according to sociologist Bashir Ahmad Dabla.

In 2013, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on violence against woman stated in her final country report on India that legislative provisions like “the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has mostly resulted in impunity for human rights violations [since] the law protects the armed forces from effective prosecution in non-military courts for human rights violations committed against civilian women among others, and it allows for the overriding of due process rights.”

Noting that impunity for armed forces was “eroding fundamental rights and freedoms […] including dignity and bodily integrity rights for women in Jammu and Kashmir”, the rapporteur called on the Indian government to repeal the Act.

A woman holds up a picture of her son, injured in the conflict. Here in Kashmir, women often bear the brunt of fighting and some have been subjected to rape at the hands of the armed forces. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Two years later, her recommendations are yet to be acted upon, with the result that not only armed forces but officials in any capacity feel at liberty to exploit women’s rights and freedoms, often in the form of sexual transgressions.

For instance, IPS recently gained access to a sexual harassment complaint filed by the female staff of the Kashmir Agricultural University with the State Women’s Commission.

Staff filed a joint appeal earlier this month so as to conceal each woman’s individual identity.

It stated: “Being the working ladies at the university, we want to share with you [the] bitter and hard realities we have been facing for the past many years”, adding that the male staff – and one official in particular – routinely harass the women, using their institutional authority to prevent the victims from taking action.

The complainants are demanding “strict punishment” for the culprits according to provisions on sexual harassment in India’s 2013 Criminal Law (Amendment) Act.

Nayeema Ahmad Mehjoor, chairperson of the SWC, told IPS that she acted on the appeal as soon as it was filed, and has already visited the university in order to take up the issue with the necessary authorities.

“They have assured me of initiating a fair probe, and we are expecting a detailed report within a few days,” she stated.

Domestic violence on the rise

These assurances are comforting but hold little weight in a society that routinely puts women’s issues on the backburner, a reality reflected in the low rate of reporting sexual crimes.

The situation is even worse in the domestic sphere, experts say, where spousal or intimate partner violence is on the rise.

Gulshan Akhtar, head of Srinagar’s lone Women’s Police Station, has been a busy officer over the past few years as she struggles to deal with a growing domestic violence caseload.

On a typical day, she receives between seven and 10 cases of domestic disputes involving violence towards the female partner.

“When this police station was established in 1998, it used to receive far fewer complaints compared to what we have been receiving over the past five-year period,” Akhtar told IPS.

“Now we receive 1,000 to 1,500 complaints of domestic violence annually,” she said, adding that the SWC receives an additional 500 complaints on average every year.

Kashmir’s State Women’s Commission (SWC) records roughly 500 cases of domestic violence every year. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

These figures – which are conservative estimates, considering that many women are silent about their suffering – reveal that every single day, over five Kashmiri women endure sexual or physical abuse.

Local news reports indicate that Jammu, the state’s winter capital, tops the list of districts with the highest number of domestic violence cases, recording over 1,200 separate incidents since 2009.

Earlier this year, newspapers quoting officials from the State Home Ministry stated that over 4,000 culprits have been booked in connection with these crimes, but rights groups maintain that prosecution levels are too low to act as a deterrent.

This past May, the women’s rights NGO Ehsaas organised a sit-in at Partap Park in Srinagar to draw attention to a surge in domestic violence.

Academics, journalists and activists gathered to mourn a woman whose husband had burned her to death the month before.

Addressing the crowd, Ehsaas Secretary and Women’s Project Consultant Ezabir Ali said, “It is high time to speak out against this barbaric form of human nature and a send message to the government to act strictly against such acts.”

The sit-in called attention to all the many forms of violence against women – from dowry killings and burnings, and from verbal and emotional abuse to rape. In 2013, according to statistics released by the Crime Branch, Kashmir recorded 378 cases of rape, an increase of 75 cases from the year before. Data for 2014-2015 is still pending.

Conflict leaves women vulnerable

Some experts say the increase in such heinous crimes is due to militarisation and the use of rape as a weapon of war.

A 2014 report by Human Rights Watch noted that “a local court recently ordered the reopening of the investigation into alleged mass rapes in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara district in 1991. Residents of the villages allege that soldiers raped women during a cordon and search operation.”

Because of the brutality involved in these incidents, and because the victims included old women and young girls alike, scholars and advocates have claimed that it set a precedent for violence against women, since the perpetrators have yet to be brought to justice.

Others say violence has risen together with women’s shifting socio-economic role in traditional Kashmiri society. With more women leaving the home to work, men feel their financial hold weakening.

“This is causing conflict as many men […] do not feel comfortable with women acquiring a [better] economic status,” author and sociologist Dabla told IPS.

IPS recently met two women at Srinagar’s Rambagh women police station, one of whom had come to lodge a complaint that her husband was forcing her to hand over her monthly earnings, or risk a divorce.

Indeed, surveys and studies undertaken by the women’s NGO Ehsaas reveal that 75 percent of Kashmiri men “felt their masculinity was threatened” if their wives did not obey them.

Activists working to safeguard women and create a more peaceful society overall say that deep and fundamental changes in both the law and social attitudes are necessary to achieve some degree of gender equality and women’s rights.

*Name changed for her protection

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Community radio stations in Bangladesh provide newscasters the opportunity to discuss topics of relevance to rural women. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, Apr 8 2015 (IPS)

Judging by how often they make headlines, one might be tempted to believe that women in Bangladesh don’t play a major role in this country’s affairs.

A recent media monitoring survey by the non-governmental organisation Bangladesh Nari Progati Sangha (BNPS) revealed that out of 3,361 news items studied over a two-month period, “Only 16 percent of newspaper stories, 14 percent of television news [items], and 20 percent of radio news [items] considered women as subjects or interviewed them.”

“Most of our audience are poor and they either don’t have access to television or cannot read newspapers. So FM radio, available even on the cheapest mobile phone, has been very popular." -- Sharmin Sultana, a news anchor for Radio Pollikontho in northeastern Bangladesh
Fewer than eight percent of all the stories had women as the central focus. Of the few women who actually made an appearance on the TV screen, 97 percent were reading out the news, while just three percent fell into the category of ‘reporters’.

Only 0.03 percent of all bylined stories studied during that period carried a woman’s name.

The monitoring report found that even though more women appeared in photographs than men, they were quoted far fewer times, proving the old proverb that, in this country of 157 million people, women are still “seen and not heard.”

While these statistics might seem daunting, women across the country who are not content to sit by and wait for the situation to change have taken matters into their own hands. They are doing so by getting on the airwaves and using the radio as a tool to raise the voices of women and bring rural issues into the limelight.

Women comprise 49 percent of Bangladesh’s population. Like the vast majority of people here they are concentrated in rural areas, where 111.2 million people – or 72 percent of the population – live.

Their distance from policy-making urban centres casts a double cloak of invisibility over women: according to data gleaned from the BNPS study, a mere 12 percent of newspaper articles, seven percent of TV news items and just five percent of radio stories focused on rural or remote areas – even though urban areas cover just eight percent of this vast country’s landmass, and host just 28 percent of the population.

The absence of women and women’s issues in the media is a dangerous trend in a country that ranked 142^nd out of 187 states in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s most recent Gender Inequality Index (GII), making Bangladesh one of the worst performers in the Asia-Pacific region.

Yet, even this is not mentioned in the news: the BNPS study showed that less than one percent of over 3,000 news items surveyed made any mention of gender inequality, while only 11 news stories challenged prevailing gender stereotypes.

Given that Bangladesh has an extremely low literacy rate of 59 percent compared to the global average of 84.3 percent, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the importance of radio cannot be underestimated.

Even in a nation where 24 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, radio is a widespread, relatively affordable means of plugging into the world, and is extremely popular among the millions of rural families that comprise the bulk of this country.

Lifting the voices of rural women

Momena Ferdousi, a 24-year-old student hailing from Bangladesh’s northwestern Chapai Nawabganj District, is one of the country’s up-and-coming radio professionals.

More and more women in Bangladesh are turning to community radio as a means of spreading awareness on women’s issues. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

She is the senior programme producer for Radio Mahananda, a community radio station launched in 2011 that caters primarily to the thousands of farming families in this agricultural region that comprises part of the 7,780-square-km Barind Tract.

She tells IPS she would not be where she is today without the support and training she, and scores of other aspiring female radio workers, received from the Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC).

Fellowships and capacity-building initiatives sponsored by BNNRC have resulted in a flood of women filling the posts of producers, anchors, newscasters, reporters and station managers in 14 regional community radio stations around the country.

“The road to my employment was challenging,” Ferdousi explains, “but BNNRC saw the potential in me and [other] female journalists and I believe we have made substantial changes by addressing gaps in women’s right to information.”

Miles away, the confident voice of Sharmin Sultana on Radio Pollikontho, broadcast in the northeastern district of Moulvibazar, reaches roughly 400,000 people spread over a 17-km radius.

With five hours of daily programming that focus largely on issues relevant to rural women, Radio Pollikontho has filled a huge gap in this community.

“It is an amazing feeling to conduct a programme, interact live with guests and respond to our audience’s requests to discuss health, women’s rights, social injustice, education and agriculture,” Sultana tells IPS. “When we began we had only one programme on women’s issues, now we run five programmes weekly, exclusively dedicated to women.”

“Most of our audience are poor,” she explains, “and they either don’t have access to television or cannot read newspapers. So FM radio, available even on the cheapest mobile phone, has been very popular and the demand for interactive live programmes is increasing by the day.”

The difficulties facing women here in Bangladesh are legion.

Only 16.8 million women are employed in the formal sector, with the vast majority of them performing unpaid domestic labour on top of their duties in the farm or field.

A lack of financial independence makes them extremely vulnerable to domestic violence: a recent study by the deputy director of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) found that 87 percent of currently married women have experienced physical violence at the hands of their husbands, while 98 percent say they have been sexually ‘violated’ by their spouses at some point during marriage.

The survey also revealed that one-third of all married women faced ‘economic abuse’ – the forcible withholding of a partner’s financial assets for the purpose of maintaining financial dependence on the perpetrator of violence.

In 2011, 330 women were killed in dowry-related violence.

Other issues, like child marriage, also make pressing news bulletins for community radio stations directed at women: according to United Nations data, some 66 percent of Bangladeshi girls are married before their 18^th birthday.

The situation is bleak, but experts say that as women become educated and aware of their rights, the tide will inevitable turn for the better.

BNNRC Chief Executive Officer A H M Bazlur Rahman, who pioneered rural radio broadcasting efforts around the country, tells IPS, “Issues like budget allocation, lack of appropriate sanitation, violence against women, fighting corruption, [and] education for girls are [often] neglected by policy makers. But if we can give women a voice, these problems [will] gradually disappear.”

It remains to be seen whether or not more women’s voices on the air will uplift the half of Bangladesh’s population in need of empowerment. But every time a woman’s voice crackles to life on a radio show, it means one more woman out there is hearing her story, learning her rights and moving closer to equality.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Young Bangladeshi women raise their fists at a protest in Shahbagh. Credit: Kajal Hazra/IPS

By Lakshmi Puri
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

At the end of this week leaders of the Group of 77 and China will meet in Bolivia to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the group.

From the original 77, this group now brings together 133 countries, making it the largest coalition of governments on the international stage. Promoting an agenda of equity among nations and among people, sustainable and inclusive development and global solidarity have been at the heart of the G77’s priorities since its inception. But none of it will be achieved without fully embracing the agenda of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Two weeks ago, I travelled to Bolivia to attend a historic international meeting in preparation for the G77 Summit, exclusively dedicated to women and gender equality. More than 1,500 women, many of them indigenous, packed the room, full of energy. Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, was also present – a testimony to his commitment and leadership to this critical agenda.

At this meeting, a message emerged, loud and clear. If we want the 21^st century to see the end of discrimination, inequality and injustice, we must focus on women and girls – half the world’s population, which continues to experience discrimination every day and everywhere. The 20^th century saw the end of colonisation. Now the 21^st century must see the end of discrimination against women.  From decolonisation, we must move to depatriarchilisation.

Lakshmi Puri, deputy executive director of UN Women, speaks at a press conference on the International Day to End Violence Against Women. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

This meeting took place at a critical time and in a significant place. Latin America has lived through its own struggles against discrimination and oppression. In a continent that used to be marked by striking inequalities and violent dictatorships, a vibrant movement has emerged to put the region on the path of social justice, democracy, and equality. In Bolivia there is a constitutional law against violence against women and a law against political violence, making it a pioneer in the region and beyond.

This hope for a brighter and more just future must now spread to the world as a whole, and the G77 can play a defining role. The elaboration of the Post-2015 development agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is coming to a critical point. The Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals is about to complete its work and member states will finalise the new development agenda in the course of next year.

This coincides with the 20-year review and appraisal of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the landmark international framework to achieve gender equality and women’s rights. Beijing+20 provides us with an opportunity to drive accelerated and effective implementation of the gender equality and women’s rights agenda and to ensure that it is central to the new development framework.

We need to take full advantage of these processes and their interconnections to ensure that gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment feature prominently in the new development agenda and to accelerate implementation.

We have a historic opportunity and a collective responsibility to make the rights and well-being of women and girls a political priority; both globally and within every country. To this end, the new framework must adopt a comprehensive, rights-based and transformative approach that addresses structural inequality and gender-based discrimination.

This comprehensive approach must include targets to eliminate discrimination against women in laws and policies; end violence against women; ensure the realisation of sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and adolescent girls throughout their life cycles; and the recognition, reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work.

Now is the time to put the full political weight behind passage of long-pending legislation to eliminate discrimination against women and promote gender equality.

Now is the time to allocate the resources to fund services for victims and survivors of violence against women.

Now is the time to strengthen national data collection and undertake a time use survey to better understand unpaid care work or a survey on violence against women.

Now is the time to make public spaces safe for women and girls.

Now is the time to improve rural infrastructure to strengthen women’s access to markets and help tackle rural feminised poverty.

Now is the time to showcase champions of gender equality, to recognise role models that have overcome stereotypes and helped level the playing field for girls and women in all areas, in politics and business, in academia and in public service, in the home and the community.

Mahatma Gandhi rightly said that true freedom from colonialism will not be achieved unless each and every citizen is free, equal and is able to realise his or her potential. The 21^st century must see the end of the centuries’ old practice of patriarchy and gender discrimination, and unshackle women and girls so they can fully enjoy their human rights.

When the G77 meets later this week at its 50^th anniversary commemorative Summit, I have high hopes that they will make this defining agenda of gender equality and women’s empowerment a centerpiece of their global development and freedom project for the next 50 years.

(END)

*Lakshmi Puri is the deputy executive director of U.N. Women, based in New York.

Working Singaporean women are forced to conform to strict gender roles, taking care of children and household chores on top of their 9-5 jobs. Credit: epSos.de/CC-BY-2.0

By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE, Jul 17 2013 (IPS)

The play opens with a man and his mother waiting impatiently at the dining table in the family home. A woman rushes in after a busy day at the office with takeaway dinner packets, followed by her son and daughter who walk in expecting their mother to serve them a meal.

The scene continues with the grandmother chastising her daughter-in-law for coming home late and failing to prepare the meal herself, a refrain quickly taken up by the husband. The young daughter is meanwhile pulled up for wearing a short skirt, though she is quick to retort that the grandmother is simply “old-fashioned”.

An undercurrent of tension that threatens to give way to violence runs through the play, which is exactly what the writers and producers intended.

‘Just a Bad Day’, a forum theatre piece designed to explore the struggles of ordinary Singaporean women against stereotyping and gender violence, is quickly making the rounds of this affluent Southeast Asian city-state, highlighting the hunger for dialogue around an issue that often gets swept under the rug.

As Director Li Xie told IPS, “Physical violence is very visible but subtle violence is hard to detect.” Yet it is exactly this latter form of violence that women in Singapore confront on a daily basis.

The 2013 Human Development Report, published annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), puts Singapore at 13^th place in the gender development index, above Western countries such as the U.S., UK, Ireland and Austria, and fellow neighbours Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Over 71 percent of women in Singapore have at least a secondary education and 57 percent participate in the labour force.

With such an impressive track record, one would believe that women here enjoy a high social status, but the reality is very different.

Entering the labour force has been both a blessing and a curse, as women are now expected to play the dual role of working mother and traditional housewife, who must cook the family meal and attend to all the domestic chores after putting in long hours on the job.

“We wanted to address these gender stereotypes, prejudices and biases [because] that’s where change starts,” argues Kokila Annamalai, communications executive at the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), the co-producer of the play.

She added that social conditioning of both men and women must be stopped at “an early stage” so as to prevent psychological violence in the future.

AWARE, the leading women’s lobby group in Singapore, has fought for over three decades for equal rights for women in the workplace and at home.

Now, the NGO is taking its campaign to a new level through the use of community forum theatre, a form that allows the audience to actively participate in the outcome of the play.

“Through this intimate performance, we hope to provoke thought and discussion on the less tangible forms of violence against women that continue to be a reality in Singapore,” Annamalai told IPS.

‘Just A Bad Day’, produced in collaboration with the community theatre company Drama Box, is a flagship project of the ‘We Can’ campaign, a global initiative involving 3.9 million people who have pledged not to “tolerate violence against women”.

As the 16^th country to join the movement, Singapore has adopted the mantra “Change starts with me”, and hopes to reach 10,000 people by the end of the year.

A crucial tool in that plan is the performance piece, devised by a team of “change makers” who will spend the rest of this year taking the play to community centres, schools and universities around the country.

First staged on Jun. 26, the play was recently presented at a youth festival called Scape where over 100 youth between the ages of 16 and 25 attended the show and participated actively in formulating a new outcome.

One audience member intervened in the first scene and got into the role of the working mother-housewife by explaining to the grandmother that women today have to work to maintain a family’s standard of living.

The original actress had portrayed a subdued and frustrated character, but the young girl in the audience injected a more aggressive quality into the mother’s role, pushing the grandmother to take a different view of the situation.

Rachel Chung, who originally played the role of the mother, told IPS after the show that she herself has experienced the kind of psychological violence depicted in the scene.

“Violence in my life started with verbal tirades, insults and put-downs from my partner,” Chung said in a recent interview. “He then assaulted me with profanities. Soon, he started shoving me when I ‘stepped out of line’ and this escalated into more physical abuse like slapping and punching.”

Stressing that violence is not “always black and blue”, Chung insisted that the “damage to my morale and self worth caused by the emotional abuse was no less than the physical injuries.”

She pointed out that one in 10 women in Singapore have experienced psychological abuse, and surveys have shown that eight in 10 Singaporeans will not interfere in domestic disputes, even if they know that a friend, relative or neighbour is being abused.

Chung called the campaign a “movement to make change” and invited men and boys to join in, citing their support as crucial for success.

Lupin Tan, who acted as the father in ‘Just a Bad Day’, told IPS that he joined the cast because of a personal connection to the role, having been what he called a “male chauvinistic father”.

He was one among 70 people who responded to a Facebook post calling for volunteers. Twenty were eventually chosen to go through a month-long exercise with Drama Theatre and come up with three scenes that would then be incorporated into the final play.

“It was important for me to reach out to people with [similar] experiences, who are unaware of this type of violence towards women,” Tan told IPS.

According to Xie, the point of the play is to force audience members to ask themselves: “What would I have done?”

Provoking spontaneity and action is important in a society where many perceive calls for help as women “making mountains out of molehills.”

In fact, a survey of over 655 men, conducted by the Ngee Ann Polytechnic School of Business and Accountancy, found that 13 percent of respondents believe women who are raped “asked for it”, while 29 percent of men believe that most women make “false” claims of rape.

It is for this very reason that Annamalai believes theatre can be useful, since it offers a non-threatening opening to a conversation and “shows rather than tells” a way forward, to a more equitable society.

Survivors of acid attacks face a host of medical and social problems. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan , Jun 28 2013 (IPS)

Women in Pakistan are no strangers to horror. In this country of 176 million, about 90 percent of women have experienced domestic violence; every year, over 1,000 women are murdered in so-called ‘honour killings’. Two years ago, the Thomson Reuters Foundation named Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world for women and girls.

Perhaps the most appalling of these many forms of violence against women are acid attacks, which have become increasingly frequent, particularly in the rural parts of the northern provinces.

The attacks themselves are brief, with the perpetrator needing nothing more than a bottle of hydrochloric acid and a few seconds to fling it on the face and body of his victim; but for the women who endure it, the effects last a lifetime.

Searing pain, lengthy and costly medical procedures, permanent disfiguration and intense social stigma are among the most obvious impacts. Less visible are the trauma and loneliness that follow this crime.

Just last week, an 18-year-old Pashto actress named Shazia Begum from the Pabbi village in Nowshera, one of 25 districts that comprise the country’s northern Khyper Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, sustained severe burns after being doused with acid by a suitor.

Shazia’s mother, Shamim Begum, told IPS that the attacker, a local film producer named Shaukat Khan, went into a rage when she rejected his offer of marriage. The next day, he scaled the wall of the family’s house and poured acid on the sleeping girl.

Shazia was rushed to the Lady Reading Hospital in KP’s capital, Peshawar, where she was anaesthetised before doctors set to work sterilising her wounds. Like many victims, she was dangerously dehydrated, and as medics daubed antibiotic cream on her burns, she was fed a steady stream of fluids through an IV.

Doctors in the hospital told IPS that most burn victims experience sufficient blood loss to warrant a transfusion. Though Shazia did not require this procedure, she will likely suffer from anaemia until her wounds are completely healed, they said.

After two days of intense treatment she was sent home with painkillers, vitamins, and warnings that constant and long-term medical attention would be a requisite for survival.

“We have received about 12 burn cases so far this year; eight of them had burns covering 50 percent of their bodies,” Dr. Abuzar Khan, a specialist at the hospital’s burn ward, told IPS.

In 2012, 27 acid attack victims were admitted here but only four survived. Most die as a result of septicaemia caused by severe infections.

The few that survive endure a veritable catalogue of medical problems: acid destroys the soft cartilage of noses and ears, causing deafness and loss of smell; lips dissolve, leaving teeth exposed and victims unable to speak or eat; eyelids are quickly and easily burned away, leading to blindness; even the skull is affected, particularly when the layers of dermis and fat burn away, leaving bones exposed.

These effects do not only induce extreme, sometimes unbearable, pain, they also wipe out a woman’s chance of finding a husband, starting a family, or leading a normal life.

Disfiguration, particularly in the face, neck and shoulders, is so intense that many victims end up as complete recluses, either hidden away by their families or too ashamed to step out in pubic.

Earlier this year, 22-year-old Razia Begum divorced her husband in order to marry another man. Furious, her husband followed her to her new home in the Charsadda district of KP and threw acid in her face.

She has since developed a burn scar contracture, a shortening of the muscles, tendons and tissues, for which she will now have to undergo reconstructive surgery.

“Nobody is willing to look at my face,” she told IPS. “It is disgusting and shameful. Death would be far better that what I am facing now.”

Few survivors can afford reconstructive surgery, which is made more expensive by a shortage of plastic surgeons in the region: according to Abuzar Khan, only 20 qualified plastic surgeons serve a population of 2.5 million people.

A basic skin grafting procedure for a small area of the face costs 500 dollars, though the chances of subsequent infections are very high.

Most of the men who experience acid burns – about 20 percent of all burn victims – sustain such injuries while working in factories that produce matches, he said, while almost all the women are victims of attacks by suitors or family members.

A strict patriarchal culture governs all social interactions in this part of Pakistan, with both men and women forced to conform to rigid gender roles. Shame occupies a large part of the public imagination, including among men who are unable to find wives.

This perhaps explains why most perpetrators are men whose marriage proposals have been rejected, said Noor Alam Khan, chairman of Voice of Prisoners, an NGO providing free legal services to acid survivors and juvenile prisoners.

“Men want to deface those women who turned them down, and deprive them of their natural beauty so no one else will look at them… or marry them,” Khan told IPS.

Valerie Khan, chairperson of the Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF), told IPS that her organisation recorded about 150 attacks in Pakistan last year, of which only 49 were reported to the police.

A long history of indifference to domestic and gender-based violence dissuades a majority of victims from lodging complaints with the police, and allows innumerable perpetrators to get off scot-free.

Now, experts say, new laws and increased awareness about the situation could act as a powerful deterrent to such crimes.

In 2011 the government passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act, tweaking section 332 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) to make acid throwing a crime punishable by anything from 14 years to life imprisonment.

Police officer Muhammad Javid told IPS that in addition to the minimum 14-year sentence, attackers would be slapped with a million-dollar fine.

Noor Alam Khan believes that strict implementation of the law, which effectively makes acid throwing a non-bailable offense, would send a strong signal to perpetrators that Pakistani society no longer tolerates such actions.

But although “the conviction rate rose to 18 percent in 2012, from six percent in 2011 as a result of the law,” according to Valerie Khan, a concerted effort must be made to prevent high acquittal rates.

Others say the government should regulate the availability of acid, currently available in general stores for about two dollars per litre.

A draft law that would have banned over-the-counter sales of substances like hydrochloric acid lingered in Parliament but eventually failed to go through due to arguments that the product was crucial for everyday items like toiletries and batteries, and for mechanics and goldsmiths.

But until strong measures are put in place, Pakistani women will live with the perpetual fear of meeting a similar fate as hundreds of their countrywomen.

By Silvia Romanelli
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2013 (IPS)

Women around the world are exposed to domestic violence, sexual and economic exploitation, gender-based violence, female genital mutilation and child marriage. For indigenous women and girls, however, the risk of being victims of such issues is especially high.

In light of this fact, the Philippines-based Tebtebba Foundation advocates for indigenous peoples’ rights, working to ensure that the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is properly implemented.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, executive director of the Tebtebba Foundation for indigenous rights. Photo credit of Victoria Taul-Corpuz.

In an interview with IPS, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, executive director of the Tebtebba Foundation and chair of the Asia Indigenous Women’s Network, discussed how indigenous women and girls can confront discriminatory practises and how the international community can support them in doing so.

Tauli-Corpuz also worked as lead consultant on the report “Breaking the Silence on Violence Against Indigenous Girls, Adolescents and Young Women“, a joint effort of different U.N. agencies aiming at addressing “the ‘statistical silence’ around violence against indigenous girls and women”.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: In some cultures, women’s submission to men and acts of violence against women and girls are seen as part of the cultural tradition. How can this idea be addressed?

A: Violence against women and girls is a violation of human rights and should not be tolerated in any way, even through qualifying it as “part of local tradition” or as something “cultural”.

Violence is experienced by individual women, although there are situations which make women that belong to a particular group, such as an indigenous people, who are at higher risk of suffering from violence because of historical and current situations of colonisation, domination, racism and discrimination.

If there are cultural practises that promote violence against indigenous women and girls, these should be severely criticised and changed."If there are cultural practises that promote violence against indigenous women and girls, these should be severely criticised and changed."
-- Victoria Tauli-Corpuz

Q: How can effective measures against violence be implemented in indigenous groups in which the internal hierarchy of family and social obligations are particularly important?

A: Measures to address violence against indigenous women and girls can be effectively implemented if state agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) take certain steps.

They can help strengthen indigenous women’s organisations to address this issue, document and monitor this phenomenon, and help local governments to implement gender and culturally sensitive ways of handling this issue and to develop programs with budgets.

They can also help raise awareness among indigenous peoples (traditional authorities, indigenous organisations, including women’s organisations) of women and children’s rights and of violence against women and girls.

Q: Colonialism has led some indigenous peoples to internalise racism and indigenous women to accept violence. Could you discuss the relationship between colonialism and violence against indigenous women?

A: Colonialism, which is linked with patriarchy, has deprived indigenous women of their basic human rights to own and control their own lands, territories and resources. It has perpetuated racism and discrimination against indigenous women to the point where some of them deny their indigenous identities and try to emulate the colonisers’ ways.

This is just one way women internalise their oppression, which makes them highly vulnerable to trafficking and prostitution.

Alcoholism and drug dependence have also been used by colonisers to dehumanise indigenous men, and colonial patriarchy has reinforced or promoted machismo among the men. These are factors that lead to violence against indigenous women and girls.

Colonisers’ efforts to extract minerals, oil and gas from indigenous territories also led them to build enclaves where male workers live and prostituted women are brought in.

Q: Sometimes the state exacerbates factors that lead to violence against women and girls and can even perpetrate some forms of violence itself, such as with discriminatory policies or culturally insensitive education and health services. In these cases, what can bodies of the United Nations do?

A: The United Nations can help facilitate possibilities and opportunities for indigenous women to use U.N. treaty bodies, like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) or the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), or the Human Rights Committee, to file complaints against discriminatory policies and programmes of states.

The special representative of the secretary-general on violence against women and children can also visit countries where cases of violence against indigenous women and girls are reported.

U.N. agencies and funds like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), U.N. Women and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), should allot more technical and financial assistance to address this issue at the country, regional and global levels.

Q: The U.N. report “Breaking the Silence” is based on the assumption that violence against indigenous girls and women should be addressed as a specific problem, within but distinct from the phenomenon of violence against women in general. Does this approach risk putting a label on these women? How can it help tackle the problem?

A: Asking that violence against indigenous women and girls be addressed as a specific problem is just stating the fact that if there are few services to address this issue for women and girls in general, this is even more so for indigenous women and girls. It does not risk labelling them. It is just naming the problem so that this can be addressed more appropriately, adequately and effectively.

It is also to clarify that indigenous women generally do not agree that culture or tradition should be used to justify the violence they suffer from and to highlight that the people who are most effective in dealing with this issue are indigenous women and girls who are empowered to assert their rights as women and as indigenous persons.

Excerpt:

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.

By Lusha Chen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 2013 (IPS)

On the sidelines of the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Huairou Commission (HC), on March 4th, organised a panel discussion on women’s access to justice. 

Sponsored by UNDP and coordinated by HC, women from over 70 communities in seven countries across Africa for over a year engaged in a participatory action research on local obstacles to women’s access to justice and new bottom-up models to remove judicial bottlenecks.

These 70 groups are dealing with issues ranging from domestic violence to HIV/AIDS, care for handicapped children and social development. Through their research, they revealed contradictions and gaps in legal frameworks that prohibit women’s access to justice — findings which they have built upon in their collective responses, including the training of community paralegals and watchdog groups.

The results of their research will further influence future policy-making within UNDP.

Shorai Chitongo, representing Ray of Hope Zimbabwe, an organisation dealing primarily with domestic violence, was among the panelists that participated in the research, along with local headman Gilbert Tendai Mungate, who talked about their collaboration. The panel was chaired by Randi Davis, Officer in Charge of the UNDP Gender Unit.

UN CSW Side Event from IPS Inter Press Service on Vimeo.

Today is International Women’s Day, and the issue of gender-based violence is topic A. Sadly, it has been a newsworthy topic in the global media, as well.

Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

However short the news cycle in this social media age, the world has certainly not forgotten the case of the 23-year-old physiotherapist who was brutally raped and murdered three months ago on a bus in Delhi, India. Although her name has been kept private, the horrible details of her victimisation have scalded the public consciousness and sparked outrage among people everywhere.

As the wheels of justice turn in Delhi, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, convening this week in New York, has listed violence against women as the lead topic at its annual conference. This issue has not been addressed as the main theme by the Commission for 13 years and is unlikely to be addressed again for another decade or more, so the timing, at least with regard to the tragic incident in India, is apt.

But the sad fact is that the issue of violence against women would be an appropriate topic at any time, in any year, because the problem has, to a large extent, been swept under the carpet in the nations of both the developed and the developing world.

In part, this is because women still do not enjoy full political and human rights in many societies, and in part it’s because we have too often allowed cultural norms and customs to serve as an excuse for violence against women.

The United Nations, as the world’s collective voice on these matters, must tackle the issue of gender-based violence head on. The time has long passed when men can or should be allowed to dictate the rights of women. Young girls should not be forced into marriage. And every woman should have the right to choose when and how many children she will have.

Finally, the U.N. must reaffirm that no cultural argument can ever justify violence against women.

The good news is that momentum is building for a strong statement by the Commission on the Status of Women. The challenge, then, will be to get the nations of the world to endorse the statement, and commit to the concrete actions it mandates.

Inevitably, there will be pushback from representatives of some of the United Nations Member States, who may argue that majority position on this critical issue does not accord with the religious or cultural values of their societies. But where violence against women is concerned, there can be no compromise. These women are our very wives, sisters, daughters and grand-daughters.

At UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, we have long advocated the human rights of women and girls, based on global conventions that these rights are fundamental and universal. To that end, we have supported programmes that seek to eliminate forced marriages, discourage adolescent pregnancy, put an end to harmful practices, such as female genital mutilation/cutting, and combat the scourge of violence against women.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, UNFPA is committed to strengthening and expanding its efforts to do everything it can to bring an end to gender-based violence. Gender-based violence remains a major health and human rights concern and no human development can be achieved fully as long as women and girls continue to suffer from violence or live in fear of it.

We will, therefore, support a strong statement from the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women, and we will urge its adoption by the Member States. The horrific rape and murder in Delhi should remind us that the women of the world cannot wait another decade for the international community to address this issue. The time to act is now.

*Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.

U.N. delegates listen to a high-level heads of agencies panel at the 57th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Credit: Lusha Chen/IPS

By Marzieh Goudarzi
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2013 (IPS)

U.N. agency heads gathered Tuesday to reassert their unified commitment to ending the epidemic of violence against women and girls, and bringing justice and healing to survivors.

Grim statistics underscore the urgency of this issue: 70 percent of women worldwide report experiencing physical and/or sexual violence, 50 percent of reported sexual assaults are committed against girls under 16 years of age, and 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence has not been criminalised.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon articulated another fact: “Too many women and girls face intimidation and physical and sexual abuse often from those who should care for and respect them most – fathers, husbands, brothers, teachers, colleagues, and supervisors.”

Tuesday’s forum transpired as a part of the 57th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), whose primary theme is the elimination of violence against women and girls.

It opened with remarks from the secretary-general and continued with a panel of high-level U.N. agency representatives, including Michelle Bachelet, executive director of U.N. Women, and Irina Bokova, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Bachelet stressed the importance of the diverse contributions of U.N. agencies to the efforts of the CSW.

“Whether we’re talking about UNESCO through education, UNDP (U.N. Development Programme) through government cooperation, UNFPA (U.N. Population Fund) through the promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights, or UNICEF (U.N. Children’s Fund) through protecting the rights of children, this work is making a difference on the ground,” she said.

UN Heads of Agencies Forum on Violence Against Women and Girls from IPS Inter Press Service on Vimeo.

Also represented were the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), World Health Organisation (WHO), International Labor Organisation (ILO), U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and U.N. Joint Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS).

Perhaps the strongest message of this forum was its unified and indisputable affirmation of violence against women and girls as a priority on the international human rights agenda.

The long struggle for recognition of violence against women as a human rights issue first achieved serious global attention at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, quickly followed by the General Assembly Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Commenting on the development of the issue at the U.N., Bokova told IPS that today, “there is a lot more awareness, commitment, and concrete action… But of course we are not there at all – it’s just the beginning.”

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Geeta Rao Gupta added, “I can tell you that over this past decade, the amount of attention that this issue has received internationally would not have happened if the U.N. had not taken a leadership position.”

“I think the major difference is that it has become a public issue. (Violence against women) is not tolerated in the way it was before,” Rebeca Grynspan, associate sdministrator of UNDP, told IPS.

“Having acknowledged that, I think that we have not had the accelerated progress that we expected,” she said. “Many times we are pedaling to stay in the same place and not go backward. That’s why I really welcome the fact that this issue has come again to the table of the CSW.”

A recent milestone was the 2010 establishment of U.N. Women, which last year provided capacity-building for stronger legislation and provision of services to survivors of violence in 57 countries.

U.N. Women manages the secretary-general’s campaign, United to End Violence Against Women, and works with U.N. Habitat and UNICEF on the Global Safe Cities Initiative, striving to make urban spaces violence-free for women and girls.

Speaking on behalf of UNESCO, Bokova stated, “Raising awareness and changing the environment through education is crucial. We have to go deep to the root of the violence,” explaining the need to instill within youth the idea that violence is not a “normal” part of life.

UNESCO has created international guidelines on sexuality education, HIV education, gender equality in education, and guidelines for teachers on stopping violence in schools.

Research shows that violence is a major threat to girls’ education, causing poor attendance and forcing many to drop out of school – another reason why the issue is high among UNESCO’s priorities.

Grynspan argued that violence against women is also a dangerous obstacle to global productivity, currently preventing seven in 10 women from achieving their greatest potential contribution to society and the economy by making them more likely to be absent from or quit school and work; violence also costs society in terms of health and legal services for victims, she explained.

Grynspan cited the 2010-2011 Human Development Report, which showed 49 percent loss in human development due to gender inequality. “There is one thing that will bring productivity up and cost down,” she said, “and that is ending violence against women.”

Director-General Margaret Chan spoke via video on the WHO’s commitment to combating this violence and discussed the wide range of health repercussions women face, including injuries to organs/tissues, unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, premature birth, maternal mortality, psychological trauma, and increased risk of sexually-transmitted diseases, such as HIV.

Deputy Executive Director Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen of UNFPA and Regional Director of UNAIDS Sheila Tlou reiterated the extremely detrimental effects of violence against women on the battle against AIDS, which has come too far to be stopped now.

Across the panel, representatives recognised the wide range of causes and perpetuators of the violence against women.

They made references to cultural practices of early, forced marriages of girls and female genital mutilation; they pointed to cultural norms that shame women as victims, discourage seeking help, and normalise violence in domestic, educational, and work settings; they discussed the vulnerability of women in conflict and post-conflict societies, where rape often becomes a weapon.

Recognising the vast majority of women both on the panel and in the audience, the representatives also called for greater engagement of men and boys and male ownership of the issues.

As Grynspan noted, with her fellow panelists nodding in agreement, “We are still, by and large, talking to ourselves.”

Protesters gather at a candlelight vigil in New Delhi to honour the 23-year-old rape victim who died last month. Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS

By Sujoy Dhar
NEW DELHI , Jan 21 2013 (IPS)

On a chilly Wednesday evening, exactly a month after a young woman was gang-raped and brutalised on a moving bus in New Delhi, hundreds of sombre citizens gathered at a candlelight protest in India’s national capital.

They had come to remember the victim who, 13 days after the assault on Dec. 16, succumbed to internal injuries in a hospital in Singapore – but not before igniting a nation to rise against an epidemic of sexual violence that has long plagued this South Asian country of 1.2 billion people.

Anger was palpable among the mourners assembled peacefully at the city’s iconic protest venue, known as Jantar Mantar, to pay tribute to the 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh Pandey, who is now referred to as “Braveheart” and “India’s daughter” after her valiant fight against six male attackers.

But the massive wave of protests and insistent calls for justice that followed the tragedy has not been a sufficient deterrent to violence: a series of gang-rapes, including a few inside buses, have been reported across India in the last few weeks.

The brutality of these assaults is almost directly proportional to the passion of the protests, activists and experts here say.

As a result, crowds have gone from demanding justice to demanding death: the “We Want Justice” slogan popularly printed on placards and banners has been replaced by the mantra: “Hang the Rapist”.

Following an explosion of street protests, social media exchanges and politicians’ remarks – ranging from assurances to platitudes and polemics – the primary debate now raging across the country is whether or not the death penalty can end, or at least reduce, such horrific attacks on women.

The debate does not spring from a void, but rather from intense frustration.

For the past month, Indian authorities have struggled to pacify urban protestors with promises of legal amendments and enhanced security for women; but even as politicians spoke from podiums and police poured into the streets, brutal attacks continued unabated.

In the northern state of Punjab, a woman was gang-raped inside a bus in early January, while in the northwestern Rajasthan state a young girl killed herself after police browbeat her for lodging a sexual assault complaint.

In Goa, a seven-year-old was raped inside a school toilet.

The case against the death penalty

The question of rape has forced politicians and scores of citizens to grapple with the limitations of the country’s justice system.

India’s Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath said laws should be changed to include death as a penalty for rape in the most brutal cases that leave the victim incapable of leading a normal life, while India’s leader of opposition in Parliament, Sushma Swaraj, who hails from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), pleaded with the Prime Minister for capital punishment.

Such political grandstanding has found support among many citizens who are angry with the rising number of assaults. A recent survey found that 100 percent of women respondents feel that solving the problem of women’s insecurity is India’s single greatest challenge.

“It’s absolutely rubbish to say that these people (the attackers) are human and deserve to be kept alive at the taxpayers’ expense,” New Delhi-based media professional Sanchita Guha told IPS.

“It (capital punishment) also brings a sense of closure to the victim,” she argued.

However, a majority of women’s groups are opposed to the death penalty or even chemical castration for rapists, demanding instead assurance of rigorous punishment for offenders who almost always get away scot-free owing to legal loopholes and an insensitive judiciary.

Kavita Krishnan, one of the most prominent faces of the New Delhi street uprising against rape and secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, told IPS, “All this talk of the death penalty is a big red herring to divert attention from gender crimes to severity of punishment.”

“The death penalty is no solution for a country with misogynistic laws. There is no evidence anywhere in the world to prove that the death penalty lessens rape or, for that matter, deters anyone from committing any other crime.”

If at all, the death penalty could be a deterrent to harsh sentences against offenders, “since the courts would be overcautious before passing such a verdict,” according to Krishnan.

“In India a large number of sexual assaults also take place at home, by close relations. There would be intense pressure on the victim to not file the complaint in the first place, if there is a death penalty,” she said.

“Conviction rates should go up in India and debate should be about surety of punishment and gender-sensitive laws.”

Currently, rapists face a minimum of seven years in jail under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), a sentence that can extend from ten years to life imprisonment depending on the severity of the case.

Under Section 375 of the IPC, rape is defined only as intercourse involving penile penetration but does not include forced oral sex, sodomy or penetration by a foreign object, which can cause more grievous injury, experts say.

These acts are placed under Section 354 of the IPC dealing with “criminal assault on a woman with intent to outrage her modesty” and Section 377 of the IPC, covering “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”.

According to Ranjana Kumari, director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Social Research (CSR), attaching the death penalty to rape could mean that the offender gets no punishment at all, since death row prisoners are allowed to file clemency petitions before the President who has the power to commute the sentence.

“If the death penalty is implemented, the judicial scrutiny will be very long as well. There are already about 95,000 cases pending in various courts and it is impossible to implement capital punishment in large numbers,” Kumari told IPS.

“We want severe punishment, which includes rigorous imprisonment, because otherwise it will be only a choice between no punishment or death as penalty,” she stressed.

Rape cases in India currently have a 26 percent conviction rate, she said. “We also found that no one gets more than three to four years in jail.”

Following the protests over the Delhi gang-rape, the government appointed a three-member committee of jurists to make recommendations on amending laws to increase the quantum of punishment and ensure speedier justice.

Headed by former Chief Justice of India J S Verma, the committee received suggestions from all quarters.

In its suggestion to the committee, prominent human rights group Amnesty International appealed for “penalties that reflect the gravity of the crime, but without recourse to the death penalty, or any other punishment which violates the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment, such as physical castration or non-consensual ‘chemical castration’.”

As the leading women’s rights lawyer, Flavia Agnes, argues, the death penalty could even prompt the rapist to kill his victim.

“If punishment for rape and murder is the same, many rapists may kill the victim to destroy evidence,” she told IPS.

Instead, “We should find answers from our parliamentarians and experts about how we can make our public places safe for women,” she said.

(END)

Huge numbers of women and even school children have braved police batons, water cannons and teargas shells in a wave of public fury against India's rape epidemic. Credit: IPS

By Sujoy Dhar
NEW DELHI , Dec 28 2012 (IPS)

While a 23-year-old woman battles for life in a New Delhi hospital after she was gang raped and brutalised on a moving bus in India’s prosperous national capital earlier this month, women across the nation say they live in constant fear of sexual assault.

The incident sparked widespread protests across New Delhi, with huge numbers of women and even school children braving police batons, water cannons and teargas shells in a wave of public fury.

Anti-rape walks in other Indian metropolises were more peaceful but the turnouts spoke volumes.

Many protesters say they are stalked by the fear of sexual assault each time they venture out of their homes, while rights activists charge that India is devoid of a proper system to deter offenders.

In a nation of 1.2 billion people, where official crime statistics say a woman is raped every 28 minutes, women’s groups say law enforcement and prosecution measures are abysmal.

“The country simply has no infrastructure to protect its women or punish their attackers with investigation and speedy trials,” Sukanya Gupta, coordinator of Swayam, a Kolkata-based women’s rights organisation, told IPS.

“Six decades after independence, we will no longer tolerate these (crimes). The chain of fear must be broken,” she stressed.

Women feel unsafe in big cities, while in rural India rape is rampant, with the victim herself often at the receiving end of punitive laws.

Rampant insecurity

According to a survey released in December by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), 92 percent of working women say they feel insecure, especially during the night, in all major economic hubs across the country.

Among the metropolitan areas, New Delhi topped the list with 92 percent of women respondents complaining that they feel unsafe, followed by 85 percent of women in Bangalore and 82 percent in Kolkata.

Women say they feel insecure working in key industries like information technology, hospitality, civil aviation, healthcare and garments.

The study by ASSOCHAM Social Development Foundation (ASDF) is based on the feedback received from both working and non-working women.

The random survey of women in the Delhi National Capital Region, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune and Dehradun found that 100 percent of women respondents feel that the problem of women’s insecurity is bigger than any other challenge currently facing India.

ASSOCHAM Secretary General D. S. Rawat told IPS, “Female employees remain extremely concerned and anxious (for their own security) even in places like hospitals.”

Poor infrastructure and response 

ASSOCHAM says a highly effective and responsive GPS system is required to reach out to distressed women using public transport.

To provide safety and security to their employees, especially females, companies and firms should provide small security devices to their workforce to preempt attacks.

Other experts have recommended measures like police verification of cab drivers’ identification.

According to the ASSOCHAM survey, the key issues that contribute to women feeling “unsafe or uncomfortable” are poor lighting, no access to emergency assistance and inadequate police security.

Women’s groups in Kolkata, where many were shocked after a woman was raped inside a car by a group who accosted her on the city’s sunset boulevard Park Street back in February, say they are fed up with this “insensitive system”.

“Close to Kolkata, a suburban town called Barasat has gained notoriety for periodic assaults on women and yet there is no proper deployment of police (to assist) girls reaching home safely,” according to Gupta.

“There is a total lack of action and that encourages the men to be aggressive towards women,” she added.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau statistics for 2011, West Bengal reported 12.7 percent of total cases of crime against women in the country, accounting for 29,133 out of a reported 228,650 crimes registered across India.

The Park Street rape victim, who spoke out on TV channels after the most recent Delhi incident, says she is still awaiting justice, with two accused absconding and the trial yet to begin.

Rape law and trial lacunae 

According to Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research (CSR) in New Delhi, India needs to immediately review its rape laws and the definition of rape itself.

“An amendment to the law has been pending for seven years. The new amendments have been prepared after lots of consultation but the government is not serious about passing it in Parliament,” she told IPS.

“Our rape laws do not define rape adequately. They talk only about penile penetration. There should be an increase in punishment, too, and economic assistance to a raped woman should not be called ‘compensation’,” she added.

“We are also against any kind of reconciliation between the rapist and the raped. Some estimates say 100,000 rape cases are pending in various courts. We have a count of 40,000. But irrespective of the figures there is a need to fast track the cases in special courts,” said Kumari.

India’s young citizens also want to see changes in the laws.

A student group in Kolkata, which recently drew about 6,000 citizens to a rally after the Delhi rape, says it will continue to demand a change in the system and the country’s laws.

Altamash Hamid (21), a student in the mass communications department in the city’s ivy league St. Xavier’s College, who led the Kolkata march, told IPS, “We want to keep the movement going and petition the President of India to change the rape laws, inculcate the fear of law in people and provide more security on the streets.”

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) estimates a 22 percent increase in cases of violence against women. Marius Arnesen/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Kreshma Fakhri
KABUL, Dec 5 2012 (IPS)

Afghan women are no strangers to gender-based violence. For decades now, violent crimes against women have been heading for epic proportions, as young girls are forced into marriage, wives and daughters are abused, and women are dealt harsh punishments for ‘moral crimes’.

Now, officials and rights groups have noticed an alarming surge in these incidents, with crimes against women becoming more frequent – and more savage.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) estimates a 22 percent increase in cases of violence against women during the last six months of 2012 compared to the same period the previous year.

On Oct. 12, three people were arrested for the murder of a woman named Mah Gul at her home in Shalbafan village in the Injil district of Afghanistan’s northwestern Herat province. The woman’s head had been cut off.

The police arrested her husband and in-laws following a claim by the dead woman’s brother – who took Gul’s body to the office of the Women’s Affairs Department in Herat City – that the family murdered her.

Mahboba Jamshidi, head of the Women’s Affairs Department, confirmed that Abdul Qader, Gul’s brother, had indeed been the one to bring in the body.

“We saw (Gul’s) jugular vein had been slashed. She died due to excessive bleeding,” Jamshidi told Killid.

The case was then handed over to the office of the Attorney General (AG), and the arrests were made.

Mah Gul’s family says their daughter was killed because she resisted her mother-in-law’s attempts to push her into sex work.

This story deserves to be categorised as an unprecedentedly horrific crime, but in fact it is just one example of an increasingly common phenomenon in Afghanistan.

A few months ago, a 20-year-old named Kulsoom, who resisted her abusive husband’s attempt to sell their daughter for money, was brutally murdered by him in her father’s house.

According to Jamshidi, “Kulsoom was against the practice of forced marriages, and had run away with her children to her father’s house. Her husband Anwar followed her there, and killed her.”

Family jail

Last month newspapers reported the release of a woman, also named Kulsoom, who had been forcibly detained in a “family jail” – a makeshift holding cell in part of an old stable – in Kasho Village in the Teshkan district of Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province.

Kulsoom said her husband, who was already married, was a very cruel man who kept her imprisoned; she was sexually abused and tortured.

“They (Kulsoom’s husband and his first wife) kept me in a dark room and beat me,” the woman told the media from her hospital bed, where she was shifted after being rescued by the police.

Assistant Professor Zofanoon Hassam, head of the provincial Women’s Affairs Department, said Kulsoom – who was pregnant when she was rescued – delivered a severely undernourished baby after being admitted to the hospital.

Sahar Gul from Darayem district was sold through marriage to a man from the northeastern Baghlan province. Her mother-in-law forced her into prostitution. Earlier this year the police rescued her.

On Jun. 27, armed men beheaded a 13-year-old girl called Shazia for resisting their attempt to kidnap her. Police have made three arrests in the case.

Lack of security

AIHRC Commissioner for Human Rights Dr. Soraya Sobhrang said the majority of fatalities involving women who resisted their captors took place in the country’s less “secure” provinces.

Moreover, she told Killid, “The commission is particularly concerned about the fact that in 80 percent of cases of sexual assault the survivors are teenage girls, under 18 years old.”

Meanwhile, the ministry of women’s affairs says a total of 471 cases of violence against women were registered in 2012. Most of the victims had resorted to suicide or self-immolation, or else run away from the house to escape brutal domestic violence.

Fawzia Amini, director of the legal department at the ministry of women’s affairs, said, “Unfortunately we have seen that more than 50 percent of the cases involve murder, (suicide), self-burning and hanging, as a result of family violence. The violence is more severe than in previous years.”

Parwin Rahimi, in charge of the Women’s Support Department at the AIHRC, believes a lack of security is the leading cause of the rise in violence.

“When everyone has a weapon, and the criminals are being supported by powerful, armed people or a commander, the numbers (of crimes against women) will keep increasing,” she said.

Rahimi added that though the law very clearly states that punishment for perpetrators of crimes against women will be most severe and there will be no amnesty or shortening of their jail terms, politically-connected assailants use Afghan courts to secure amnesty and light sentences.

“We have seen that many criminals who have committed crimes against women are released by (presidential) decree. The lack of law enforcement (is a major reason) for the increase in violence against women.”

The AG’s office stoutly defends its track record. Rahmatullah Nazari, deputy AG, says his office has investigated cases that rights groups were not even aware of.

On Nov. 19, Afghan President Hamid Karzai backtracked on an informal moratorium on the death penalty and signed the final execution warrants of 16 Afghan prisoners convicted of crimes including rape, murder and abduction. The prisoners were hanged.

*Kreshma Fakhri writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS.

Women demand their rights outside the government secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram, India. Credit: K.S. Harikrishnan/IPS

By K. S. Harikrishnan
NEW DELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Oct 19 2012 (IPS)

As gender-based violence across India becomes more frequent, and more savage, increasing numbers of women are speaking out against the cruelty.

On Oct. 6, a 14-year-old girl from the Sacha Khera village in the Jind district of northern India’s Haryana state set herself on fire after a brutal gang rape.

In her statement to the police, the girl claimed that two male youngsters dragged her into a house, while the sister-in-law of one of the culprits stood guard on the terrace.

The teenaged girl doused herself in kerosene oil shortly after the attack. She was rushed to the hospital but eventually succumbed to her injuries.

In September, according to ‘oneindianews’, 17 rapes were reported in Haryana, a state infamous for so-called ‘honour killings’ of young women and girls who are thought to have brought dishonour upon their family or community.

Sonia Gandhi, chairperson of the ruling United Progressive Alliance, who met the girl’s family, told reporters in Jind on Oct. 9 that those guilty of such heinous crimes must be severely punished.

Nationwide trends suggest that the incident in Haryana, reports of which shocked the country for days, is far from an isolated case.

The annual report by the New Delhi-based National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) found that a “total of 228,650 incidents of crime against women were reported in the country during the year 2011 as compared to 213,585 incidents in the year 2010, recording an increase of 7.1 percent.”

The issue has also attracted the attention of government officials. Indian Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde told a conference of police director generals and inspectors in New Delhi on Sep. 6 that crimes against women were indeed on the rise and stressed the need to adopt adequate methods of dealing with the perpetrators.

Analysts point out that the violence ripping through India often takes the form of rape, kidnapping, dowry-related cruelty, molestation and harassment.

Dr. Sreelekha Nair, researcher at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in New Delhi, told IPS that data for the period between 2007 and 2011 revealed that cruelty by husbands topped the list, with 99,135 cases reported in 2011.

Meanwhile, 42,968 molestation cases were reported to the police that same year, making it the second most prevalent crime. Police stations also registered 35,565 complaints of kidnapping or abduction.

Turning the tide

Female politicians, activists and other leading members of civil society assert that a decline in the quality of governance, lack of public awareness and lethargy on the part of internal security officials have made matters worse for women.

Member of Parliament and head of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), T. N. Seema, told IPS that both administrative and judicial institutions would have to adopt more gender sensitive policies in order to contain the wave of violence.

“The number of violent crimes is increasing every year while the number of (those convicted) for (such crimes) is decreasing. When analysing records, we can see that only one-fourth of the total accused” received any kind of punishment.

According to Seema, “The mindset of society must be changed to accommodate the heightened role of women in public life.”

The fact that a male-dominated power structure still has a strong hold over most of Indian has led to a culture of victim blaming.

Urban centres bear the brunt of this rising tide of gender-based violence, with the government recording “a total of 33,789 (reported) cases of crimes against women (in) 53 cities during the year 2011 as compared to 24,335 cases in the year 2010.”

Archana Rajeev, a senior journalist in Thiruvananthapuram, believes this could be attributed to the presence of large floating populations, comprised primarily of male migrant workers, in metropolises such as New Delhi.

However, crimes against women should not be viewed exclusively as a “law and order” problem, experts say.

The main cause is an entrenched feudal, patriarchal mindset that refuses to regard women as independent, autonomous and equal human beings.

The beefing up of policing and judicial policies has to be accompanied by a socio-cultural campaign to ensure the rights of women.

More women holding positions of power within local administrations has led to widespread awareness about crimes and abuse. Simultaneously, an increase in the number of registered complaints in police stations suggests victims themselves are becoming more vocal about the issue.

A recent joint study conducted by experts at the Harvard business school, the University of Warrick and the International Monetary Fund traced the link between the surge in the number of reported cases of gender-based violence and the impact of the 1993 self-government reforms, which introduced a quota system to boost female political representation in local bodies throughout the country.

According to the researchers, “There are two reasons behind the surge in reported crimes against women. First, greater numbers of female politicians make the police more responsive to crimes against women.

“Second, women victims who encounter more sympathetic women leaders may feel more encouraged to report crimes.”

Sociologists believe that property, education and employment are key assets for women to be able to combat violence.

Durga Lakshmi, an independent researcher in Kollam, a coastal city in the southern state of Kerala, told IPS, “Education and employment have been upgrading the status of women, helping (them) to find a solution in complex situations.”

A study on containing violence against women in rural Haryana conducted by Prem Chowdhary, former professorial fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, stated, “Once a woman’s role in the household changes from recipient to provider, her (role) as a decision maker also stands to be recognised and consolidated, erasing the social sanction for violence.”

(END)