Stop the Abuse of Women Around the World Did you know that one out of every three women in the world will be sexually or physically abused in her lifetime? In countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, rape and other forms of sexual violence have become weapons of war. But this is not just a problem in war-torn areas, but also in stable places like El Salvador, where violence rates against women are three times higher than the world average. The US has an obligation to do everything in its power to make sure physical abuse against women is reduced and ultimately eliminated. That’s why Women Watch Afrika is supporting a bill that would make a significant investment in ending violence against women worldwide. The bill needs Republican supporters in the House, and that is why we are calling on you today. Please help convince Congress to do the right thing. The International Violence Against Women Act would increase the US government’s role in ending violence against women around the world. The bill would direct the president to develop a comprehensive strategy to prevent violence against women and girls internationally and provide funding for programs to end the cycle of violence. Women Watch Afrika is involved in an international movement to end all forms of gender – based violence and we know how critical this bill could be for women around the world. Please stand with us in pushing for this essential piece of legislation. Donate to Women Watch Afrika Fund to Eliminate Violence Against Women Violence Against Women Target of Legislation in US Congress 23 July 2008New bill would improve US government efforts to reduce violence against women around the world. Senators Joseph Biden (D-DE) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) have proposed a new bill to prioritize and strengthen US efforts to reduce violence against women. The International Violence Against Women Act was proposed in the Senate in November of 2007 and is now being considered in the House of Representatives. In the House it is sponsored by Representative Berman (D-CA), Representative DeLauro (D-CT), and Representative Marshall (D-GA). The International Violence Against Women Act would amend the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to: • Create a central office for "Global Women's Initiatives" in the Department of State that would oversee US policies and programs related to women and gender-based violence. This office would report directly to the Secretary of State. • Create a five-year strategy to fight violence against women in 10 to 20 countries. • Provide $175 million a year for criminal and civil justice, health care, girls' access to education and school safety, women's economic empowerment, and public awareness campaigns. • Require training, reporting mechanisms and a system for dealing with women and girls afflicted by violence during humanitarian, conflict and post-conflict operations. Women Watch Afrika is calling on its supporters in the United States to ask for bipartisan support for the International Violence Against Women Act. Violence against women pushes poor women further into poverty, destroys their mental and physical health, and puts families at risk. It is a serious problem in wealthy as well as poor countries, but some of the most vulnerable women are in conflict areas such as eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where thousands of women have been victimized in fighting over the last 10 years. In many other countries such as El Salvador, violence continues to plague women: In 2007 more than 250 women were murdered between January and September. As many as one in three women in the world may be victims in the course of their lives, according to a 2005 World Health Organization report on violence against women. "This legislation will increase and improve services for survivors of violence, hold perpetrators of violence accountable, and help the US push for an end to the horrible sexual violence we see in places like Democratic Republic of Congo." "Women Watch Afrika, Inc supporters can help improve the lives of women worldwide by telling their legislators that they care about this issue and want them to support this legislation." Gender-Based Violence from the eyes of UNIFEM At least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime — with the abuser usually someone known to her Violence against women and girls is a universal problem of epidemic proportions. Perhaps the most pervasive human rights violation that we know today, it devastates lives, fractures communities, and stalls development. Statistics paint a horrifying picture of the social consequences of violence against women in 2002; the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation declaring violence against women a public health emergency, and a major cause of death and disability for women 16 to 44 years of age. In a World Bank report, it was estimated that violence against women was as serious a cause of death and incapacity among women of reproductive age as cancer, and a greater cause of ill-health than traffic accidents and malaria combined The economic cost is also considerable a 2003 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the costs of intimate partner violence in the USA alone exceed $5.8 billion per year: 4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care services while productivity losses account for nearly $1.8 billion [4]. The following facts and figures from around the world further illustrate the problem: Domestic and Sexual Violence Trafficking in Women and Girls HIV/AIDS and Violence Harmful Traditional Practices Crimes against Women in War and Armed Conflict The entire document is available for download as a PDF file (49 KB). Domestic and Sexual Violence Domestic and intimate partner violence involves physical and sexual attacks against women in the home, within the family or within an intimate relationship. Women are more at risk of experiencing violence in intimate relationships than anywhere else. In no country in the world are women safe from this type of violence. Out of ten counties surveyed in a 2005 study of the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 50 per cent of women in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru and Tanzania reported having been subjected to physical or sexual violence by intimate partners, with figures reaching staggering 71 per cent in rural Ethiopia. Only in one country (Japan) did less than 20 per cent of women report incidents of domestic violence. An earlier WHO study puts the number of women physically abused by their partners or ex-partners at 30 per cent in the UK, and 22 per cent in the US. Based on several surveys from around the world, half of the women who die from homicides are killed by their current or former husbands or partners. Women are killed by people they know and die from guns violence, beatings and burns among numerous other forms of abuse. A study conducted in Sao Paulo, Brazil reported that 13 per cent of deaths of women of reproductive age were homicides, of which 60 per cent were committed by the victims’ partners. In the USA, 700,000 women are raped or sexually assaulted each year, with 14.8 per cent of women reporting having been raped before the age of 17. In a randomly selected study of nearly 1,200 ninth-grade students in Geneva, Switzerland, 20 per cent of girls revealed they had experienced at least one incident of physical sexual abuse. This form of sexual violence also extends beyond the domestic domain. Although many countries now have legislation that addresses domestic violence, high levels of violence still persist. There is clearly a need for greater focus on implementation and enforcement of legislation, and an end to laws that emphasize family reunification over the rights of women and girls. In many societies, the legal system and community attitudes add to the trauma rape survivor’s experience. Women are often held responsible for the violence against them, and in many places laws contain loopholes which allow the perpetrators to act with impunity. In a number of countries, a rapist can go free under the Penal Code if he proposes to marry the victim and she consents. In Pakistan and many other Islamic countries, ordinances require women reporting rape to provide a set number of credible male witnesses to verify the crime. Victims unable to provide these witnesses are often charged instead with adultery. Trafficking in Women and Girls Trafficking involves recruiting or transporting another person in order to place them in a situation of abuse or exploitation such as forced prostitution, slavery-like practices, battering and extreme cruelty, sweatshop labor, or exploitative domestic servitude [26]. While exact data is hard to come by, estimates on the number of trafficked women and girls range from 700,000 to two million per year [27]. More than 200,000 Bangladeshi women have been trafficked from 1990 to1997; and 5000 to 7000 Nepali women and girls illegally trafficked to India. In Europe for example, 10 to 15 per cent of foreign prostitutes in Belgium were trafficked from other countries and sold into prostitution rings. These women and girls were mainly from Central and Eastern Europe, Colombia, Nigeria and Peru [28]. Illegal trafficking in persons frequently involves organized crime, and efforts to combat it can involve serious risks. — With support from United States Assistance to International Development (USAID), UNIFEM’s South Asia Regional Office, located in New Delhi, India, and has established the South Asian Regional Anti-Trafficking Program to reduce the incidence of trafficking in women and children in the South Asian region. As part of this initiative, the first-ever regional resource centre on anti-trafficking has been set up for the region [29]. HIV/AIDS and Violence Women’s inability to negotiate safe sex and refuse unwanted sex is closely linked to the high prevalence HIV/AIDS. Unwanted sex — from being unable to say “no!” to a partner and be heard, to sexual assault such as rape — results in a higher risk of abrasion and bleeding, providing a ready avenue for transmission of the virus. Both realities obliterate women’s ability to protect themselves from infection. Violence is a cause as well as a consequence of HIV/AIDS: for many women, the fear of violence prevents them from declaring their HIV-positive status and seeking help and treatment. They have been driven from their homes, left destitute, been ostracized by their families and community, and subjected to extreme physical and emotional abuse. In 1998 Gugu Dhlamini was stoned to death by men in her community in South Africa, after she declared her positive status on radio and television on World AIDS Day. Young women are particularly vulnerable to coerced sex and are increasingly being infected with HIV/AIDS. Over half of new HIV infections world-wide are occurring among young people between the ages of 15 to 24, and over 60 per cent of HIV-positive youth between the ages of 15 to 24 are women. A study conducted in Tanzania in 2001 found that HIV-positive women were over 2 and half times more likely than HIV-negative women to have experienced violence perpetrated by their current partner [30]. A 2002 UNIFEM-sponsored report on the impact of armed conflict on women underscores how the chaotic and brutal circumstances of armed conflict aggravate all the factors that fuel the crisis. Tragically and most cruelly, in many conflicts, the planned and purposeful HIV infection of women has been a tool of war, often pitting one ethnic group against another, such as what occurred in Rwanda [31]. Harmful Traditional Practices Harmful traditional practices refer to types of violence that have been committed against women in certain communities and societies for so long that these abuses are considered a part of accepted cultural practice. These violations include female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM), dowry murder, so-called honor killings, and early marriage. They lead to death, disabilities, and physical and psychological dysfunction for millions of women annually. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) FGM refers to several types of traditional cutting operations performed on women and girls. Often part of fertility or coming-of-age rituals, FGM is sometimes justified as a way to ensure chastity and genital “purity.” FGM occurs primarily in over 25 African countries [13], among some minorities in Asia and immigrant communities in Europe, Australia, Canada and the US. An estimated 130 million women today have undergone FGM, and an additional 2 million girls and women are being subjected to it each year. Since the late 1980s, opposition to FGM and efforts to combat the practice has increased. Some countries have passed legislation to regulate or ban FGM. — UNIFEM supported a project in Kenya, which involved local communities developing alternative coming-of-age rituals, such as “circumcision with words” — celebrating a young girl’s entry into womanhood with words instead of genital cutting [14]. A joint initiative by UNICEF, WHO, and UNFPA seeks to drastically decrease the incidence of FGM, including assisting governments to develop and implement national polices to abolish the practice. Dowry Murder Dowry murder is a brutal practice involving a woman being killed by her husband or in-laws because her family is unable to meet their demands for her dowry — a payment made to a woman’s in-laws upon her engagement or marriage as a gift to her new family. It is not uncommon for dowries to exceed a family’s annual income. While cultures throughout the world have dowries or analogous payments, dowry murder occurs predominantly in South Asia. In India, for example, there are close to 15,000 dowry deaths estimated per year [15] and mostly in kitchen fires designed to look like accidents [16]. In Bangladesh, there have been many incidents of acid attacks due to dowry disputes [17], leading often to blindness, disfigurement, and death. In 2002, 315 women and girls in Bangladesh were victims of acid attacks [18]. — In India, women’s organizations have successfully advocated for changes to the 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act, including amendments in the 1980s to hire community members as “dowry prohibition officers.” In addition, the country’s murder law has been revised to define and punish dowry death. However, these changes have not been enforced widely throughout the nation [19]. Undoing the dynamics of dowry deaths requires change at a deep level, within the context of globalization and economic restructuring, where dowry ceases to be an economic institution and women's lives the commodity that is traded. Honor Killings In many societies, rape victims, women suspected of engaging in premarital sex, and women accused of adultery have been murdered by their male relatives because the violation of a woman’s chastity is viewed as an affront to the family’s honor. According to a 2002 UN human rights report, more than 1,000 women are killed in Pakistan in the name of honor every year [20]. In a study of female deaths in Alexandria, Egypt, 47 per cent of the women were killed by a relative after the woman had been raped [21]. In Jordan and Lebanon, 70 to 75 per cent of the perpetrators of these so-called honor killings are the women’s brothers [22]. It is not only in Islamic countries that this act of violence is prevalent. Brazil is cited as a case in point, where killing is justified to defend the honor of the husband in the case of a wife’s adultery [23]. — In the West Bank and Gaza, UNIFEM’s TFEVAW supported a project that documented honor killing cases in Palestinian society and recommended strategies to protect potential victims and strengthen the legal system to deter such practices. The project involved men in the family to protect the woman from harm and recorded this action with a family contract. Early Marriage The practice of early marriage is prevalent throughout the world, especially in Africa and South Asia. This is a form of sexual violence, since young girls are often forced into the marriage and into sexual relations, which jeopardizes their health, raises their risk of exposure to HIV/AIDS and limits their chance of attending school. Parents and families often justify child marriages to ensure a better future for their daughters. Parents and families marry off their younger daughters as a means to gain economic security and status for them as well as for their daughters. Insecurity, conflict and societal crisis also support early marriage. In many African countries experiencing conflict, where there is a high possibility of young girls being kidnapped, marrying them off at an early age is viewed as a means to securing their protection. In some countries, a rapist can be exempt from punishment if he is prepared to marry the victim, and the law can allow judges to lower the age of marriage in cases where the rape victim is a minor [24]. In the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, for example, young girls are “sold” by their parents into marriage for money. This is done without the consent of daughters; and often the husbands are wealthy older men. This is no longer permitted by law, but still practiced. Girls fleeing such marriages can be put in jail and are shunned by society. If they are released, they are either killed by their own family or their in-laws, or sold again [25]. |