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Link to UNCHR
(E/CN.4/2001/NGO/72)
COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Fifty-seventh Session
Item 12 (a) of the Provisional Agenda
INTEGRATION
OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND THE GENDER PERSPECTIVE
VIOLENCE
AGAINST WOMEN
Written
statement submitted by the Asian Legal Resource Centre
a
non-governmental organization with general consultative status
Lack
of legal and institutional remedies for violence against women in
Asia
1.
The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women
(1993) recognised violence against women as constituting "a
violation of the rights and fundamental freedoms of women [that]
impairs and nullifies their enjoyment of those rights and
freedoms…" The Beijing Platform for Action (1995)
exhorted governments to
a.
"Enact and/or reinforce penal, civil, labour and
administrative sanctions in domestic legislation to punish and
redress the wrongs done to women and girls who are subjected to
any form of violence, whether in the home, the workplace, the
community or society"; and,
b.
"Adopt and/or implement and periodically review and analyse
legislation to ensure its effectiveness in eliminating violence
against women, emphasizing the prevention of violence and the
prosecution of offenders; take measures to ensure the protection
of women subjected to violence, access to just and effective
remedies, including compensation and indemnification and healing
of victims, and rehabilitation of perpetrators."
2.
However subsequent reports monitoring progress to stop violence
against women in Asian countries reveal a dismal failure,
especially on the part of governments and state institutions, to
come to grips with the deeply embedded, systemic nature of
violence against women in Asian societies. The United Nations
Population Fund’s State of the World Population 2000 report,
for instance, observes that
a.
Each year the world’s women have 80 million unwanted
pregnancies, undergo 20 million unsafe abortions, suffer millions
of beatings and rapes, are often killed at birth because of their
gender and are sometimes murdered in so-called "honour
killings".
b.
Violence against women in Bangladesh is the worst in the world,
with 47% of all women violently assaulted by their male partners.
In India, 40% of women suffer violence.
c.
In developing countries, medical professionals attend only 53% of
births, while almost 30% -- some 38 million each year -- receive
no medical care after giving birth. Complications from pregnancy
kill one in every 48 pregnant women in the developing world.
Unsafe abortions cause the deaths of 78,000 women annually and
suffering for millions more.
d.
At least 60 million girls are "missing", mostly in
Asia, as a result of infanticide or sex-selective abortions,
while an additional 5,000 are murdered each year, most in the
Middle East, by their own families in "honour"
killings. Some victims of honour killings are murdered for having
been raped.
3.
In Asia, one of the greatest obstacles to the elimination of
violence against women is not only inadequate national
legislation, but that state institutions – including the
judiciary and police – lack the knowledge and will to affect
the changes in attitudes, laws and procedures necessary to
prevent gender violence and provide remedies where necessary. The
lack of will to effect reforms in the interest of women's rights
lies with the deep-rooted gender bias in both personal attitudes
of state officials as well as in the structures and procedures of
state institutions, reinforced by many traditional, religious and
cultural norms and practices.
4.
The recent report of the United Nations Development Fund for
Women (UNIFEM), With An End in Sight: Strategies from the UNIFEM
Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women, discusses the
need for reform and sensitization of legal institutions in Asia.
It notes that violence against women is sanctioned when allowed
to go unpunished, and continues, "But punishment, to be
effective, requires several elements, including legal sanction,
judicial and law enforcement action, and community approbation.
In some cases, the laws that make violence a crime also serve to
perpetuate it. In many countries, for example, the law still
allows rape charges to be dropped if the perpetrator marries his
victim." Take this example from India, where a woman’s
fate was decided for her by rape and social pressure:
The court of the
additional judicial commissioner of Ranchi ordered Mustafa Ansari
of Pipra Toll in Ranchi district to marry the girl he had raped,
Roshan Khatoon, of the same village. Finding the girl alone at
home Mustafa raped her at 8 pm on May 3, 1999. The next day an
FIR was lodged against him and Mustafa was subsequently arrested
and lodged at the Birsa Munda Central Jail on June 4, 1999. While
in jail Mustafa expressed his desire to marry Roshan. Apparently
he had fallen in love with Roshan and distressed by her rejection
he had avenged himself by raping her when she was alone.
Mustafa's proposal was conveyed to the court of additional
judicial commissioner Justice PK Sinha. The judge granted his
request, the girl 's family was contacted and Roshan agreed to
marry Mustafa. (The Indian Telegraph, September 1, 2000)
5.
The UNIFEM report observes that contradictions in laws may also
serve to perpetuate gender-based violence, especially when
customary laws regarding divorce and alimony, or family
maintenance payments, make it difficult for a married woman to
escape an abusive situation, especially if she has children. The
result may be dowry killings and acid attacks, common in India
and Bangladesh:
A total of
6,917 women died in 1998, up from 5,513 in 1996, because their
families could not meet the dowry demands of their husbands,
according to India's National Crime Records Bureau. Many were
burned or otherwise abused, and their deaths portrayed by their
husbands’ families as suicides or accidents. Many more are
harassed physically and mentally in other ways... India's laws
forbid such practices but they are not always enforced and women
and their parents are often afraid to file police reports.
Convictions for dowry-related killings are declining, totaling
5.2% in 1997 and 4.9% in 1998. Meanwhile, social stigma and
economic factors make it difficult for women to leave their
husbands to live on their own or to return to their parents.
[Up] to 460
women were killed between January and June in Bangladesh, with
many of the deaths blamed on suicide due to diseases. Concerned
parties failed to file court cases in a number of instances,
generally because of cost and the lengthy judicial process. Some
alleged incidents involve the use of a skin-burning acid as well
as severe beating… Hundreds of young women are being
attacked "simply because they dared to say no to men."
Many of the victims are teenagers from very poor families who are
attacked after rejecting a man’s marriage proposal. Acid
throwing was ruled a capital offense in 1983, with punishment as
severe as a death sentence. But no executions have resulted from
the ruling. In 1998, there were 145 reported incidents of acid
attacks, 87 cases filed and 14 men sentenced to life in prison,
according to the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association.
Only 10% of attackers are ever brought to trial (UN Wire, July 7,
2000)
6.
In many cases, UNIFEM notes, existing laws are insufficient due
to inadequate understanding and enforcement. In Cambodia, for
example, police and judges interpret the law such that a man
attacking his wife is only guilty of a crime if the woman is
"stabbed, shot, unconscious or dead"; domestic violence
is viewed as a private matter unless the injuries are near-fatal
or fatal.
7.
Violence against women is legitimised by blaming the victim. If a
woman has been raped, the UNIFEM report observes, "her moral
character, her sexual history and even the clothes she was
wearing at the time are all considered in conducting an
evaluation of the validity of her complaint and her testimony".
Beaten wives are asked by police and judicial officers as to what
they did to incite their husbands. Women are conditioned by
society and the justice system to believe that they are somehow
responsible for physical and sexual assaults against them. In a
recent survey on gender violence in Japan over half the women
respondents stated that they had experienced verbal or physical
abuse from their partners, against which they lack social and
legal protection:
One woman in
the survey said that while she was bleeding after a severe
beating by her husband, she sought help from the police. But she
was just told to check into a hotel. "I was told coldly that
it is just a matter between husband and wife," she wrote,
echoing many other similar stories… (IPS, September 11,
2000)
8.
Honor killings in South Asia, particularly Pakistan and
Bangladesh, are a cause for considerable concern. According to
the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the number of honour
killings rose to over 1,100 in 2000. While the government has
criticised the practice, the Human Rights Commission maintains
that nothing is being done to stop it (UNWire, November 1, 2000).
According to UNICEF women’s groups, police are easily bribed
or persuaded to drop complaints as "domestic accidents",
and many judges do not even consider the killing of a wife by a
husband to be an act of murder. Some recent cases of extreme
domestic violence include the cases of Perveen Aktar, 37,
severely burned in September when her husband, a fruit peddler in
Rawalpindi threw acid on her. According to Aktar, whose face,
chest and back are badly scarred, her husband wanted to return to
his first wife, and she refused. She said she went to the police,
but that her husband paid them a series of bribes and they did
not investigate. He has since fled to another city.
Kousar Perveen,
a 32-year-old mother of four from Talagang, about 100 miles south
of Islamabad, allegedly beaten and burned to death by her in-laws
in February. According to her parents and sisters, the in-laws
had forbidden her to leave their house, even to visit her ailing
parents or attend a cousin's wedding, and she had quarreled
bitterly with them… The in-laws reportedly claimed she had
been burned in a kitchen fire, but her family said she had been
tied up and murdered. Two people are under arrest, but no trial
date has been set. (Washington Post Company, 2000)
9.
Throughout Asia, legal processes biased in men’s favour
encourage violence against women. In country after country, women
do not seek assistance from law enforcement institutions because
they expect little response and possibly considerable
humiliation. The Asian Legal Resource Centre exhorts all
governments to uphold the rights of women to "equal
protection of the law" (Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, article 8) and to "exercise due diligence to
prevent, investigate and, in accordance with national
legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those
acts are perpetrated by the State or by private individuals"
(Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women,
article 4c).
Posted on 2001-01-30
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