Policy areas

CRIME & VIOLENCE - Violence against women

 

Not all violence committed in the world is considered criminal in the sense that victims of violence are adequately protected by the legislative system or tradition. For example, domestic violence is often considered a ‘private matter’ and therefore violence against women committed in the home is not always reported, or considered a ‘rights issue’. Two of the most common forms of violence against women are abuse and coerced sex by intimate male partners, and this variably takes place in childhood, adolescence or adulthood.

 

The United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (1993), defines violence against women as covering “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life.” Although comparative and official data is lacking on violence against women, numerous research have been conducted on the issue. According to a study published in Population Reports, at least one in three women globally will have been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise experienced abuse in her lifetime.

 

While women are more likely to suffer from violence at home, men are more likely to do so outside the home. At the same time, it is generally agreed that the most under-reported crime is domestic violence, defined as “violence that takes place in the home among people who are in close relationship.” It includes emotional abuse, as well as sexual and physical violence. Victims rarely report the abuse to the police and because society has long considered domestic violence a private matter, the full extent of violence in the family is not known. Despite recent efforts in a few ECE countries to capture the extent of domestic violence, official data are extremely scarce, whereas official crime statistics only capture domestic violence when it is reported to the police, or becomes public tragedies and results in serious injury or death.

 

Domestic violence is a serious crime that takes a heavy toll on physical and mental health. According to Women and Men in Europe and North America The World Bank has estimated that sexual and domestic violence accounts for 19 per cent of the disease burden among women aged 15-44 in industrialised countries. Studies conducted in a number of EU member states found that one in five women in Ireland, one in four in the UK and one in three in Portugal and Germany had been exposed to domestic violence.

 

Existing results of studies available seem to indicate that gender-related violence has increased during transition in the formerly centrally planned economies, according to reports such as Gender in Transition (World Bank, 2002) and Transition 1999 (UNDP, 1999). Much of the domestic violence stems from the unstable economic and social situation, and is traceable to the rising frustrations from unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. Because of housing shortages, for example, spouses who want to separate are often forced to continue living together. Rapes represent another major form of violence against women in all ECE countries. A report on the Status of Women in Kazakstan (1997),published by the UN Gender in Development Bureau in Kazakhstan, indicates that for the population of 8 million women in Kazakstan, one out of every 400 women experience rape. In addition, the resurgence of customary and polygamous unions not covered by legal protection in some countries in Central Asia has made women even more vulnerable to violence.

 

Problems of underreporting are particularly serious in the various forms of violence against women. Sometimes the difficulties in collecting reliable quantitative data in this field are given as a main reason not to address this issue at all. There are, however, good practices both at national and international level that demonstrate the feasibility of this.

 

Women and men experience conflicts in different ways. While men are often forced to fight wars and are more often killed in war, women often experience violence, forced pregnancy, abduction, sexual abuse and slavery. Their bodies, deliberately infected with HIV/AIDS or carrying a child conceived in rape, have been used as means to undermine, disgrace and threaten the perceived enemy, as the UNIFEM report Women, War and Peace explains.

 

Women rarely have the same resources, political rights, authority or control over their environment and needs that men do. In addition, their care-taking responsibilities limit their mobility and ability to protect themselves during conflicts. Economic upheaval in the process of conflict, the deepening violence women experience during war, the long-term effects of conflict and militarisation create a culture of violence that renders women especially vulnerable after war.

 

Examples of policies in the region:
Sweden: Bill on Violence Against Women

 

Survey on violence against women:

The International Violence Against Women Survey