Turning the Tide: Part 1

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The fight to end violence against women is both historic and universal. Historic, because gender inequality, which lies at the root of this violence, has been embedded in human history for centuries and the movement to end it challenges history, custom and, most critically, the status quo. Universal, because no society is an exception to the fact that violence against women is perpetrated through social and cultural norms that reinforce male-dominated power structures. The struggle is nothing less than a demand for full human rights to be unconditionally extended to all people everywhere.Those engaged in this struggle recognize that despite important advances that have laid the foundation for universal human rights, the work has only just begun. In October 2004, on the 25th anniversary of the landmark Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the committee monitoring international implementation stated, “In no country in the world has women’s full de jure and de facto equality been achieved.”

In most countries, in fact, the reality remains bleak. Discriminatory social norms and practices continue to impede women’s full enjoyment of their human rights. Insufficient political will, the extensive under representation of women in decision-making positions and a lack of resources to address the issue are further impediments to progress.

Asserting human rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted without dissent by the United Nations in 1948, recognizes the “equal and inalienable rights” of all people, “without distinction of any kind.” Violence against women contravenes a number of the fundamental human rights laid out in this Declaration such as the right to security of person; the right not to be held in slavery or subjected to inhuman treatment; the right to equal protection before the law; and the right to equality in marriage. Nevertheless, states sometimes deploy the argument of cultural relativism to defend practices that abuse women. According to the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, “The universal standards of human rights are often denied full operation when it comes to the rights of women.”

This book highlights through written description and visual representation many of the persistent expressions of gender-based violence. The testimonies of women and girls emphasise that there is no room for complacency or a false sense of rapid progress in the fight against inequality. To the countless women still suffering today, any positive changes that have been achieved must bear little relevance to their immediate reality. Nevertheless, remarkable developments have taken place in recent years, due in large part to the commitment of a few to change the behavior of many. In the face of formidable forces maintaining the patriarchal systems that give rise to both discrimination and violence against women, there is evidence that the tide may be turning.

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Male perpetration: Part 3

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“A dangerous catalyst

Studies of the link between intimate-partner violence and rape and substance abuse indicate that “a larger proportion of incidences of physical and sexual violence involve alcohol or drug use by perpetrator, victim or both.” Research has shown that sexually aggressive dates are more likely to drink heavily or use drugs. Other studies mention that while the consumption of alcohol may lower inhibition for some men who are predisposed to sexual aggression, the pharmacological effect of alcohol on physical arousal may actually impede a man’s ability to complete a rape.

Numerous testimonies from battered and sexually abused women confirm that alcohol – while not a cause of violence – can be a common catalyst to abuse. Research indicates an association between heavy alcohol consumption and sexual and physical violence against women, but it is unclear, however, how alcohol increases the risk of violence. Drunkenness can provide an excuse for antisocial behavior, such that men feel they will not be held accountable for their actions. There is evidence that men with alcohol problems tend to be violent more frequently and inflict more serious injuries on their partners.

Dishonouring women and girls

“Pakistani police have arrested five men on charges of kidnapping and gang-raping a woman in the latest of a string of so-called honour crimes. The married women was attacked because one of her male cousins had an affair with a woman whose father disapproved of the relationship, police said…”

Despite popular perceptions, the concept of “honour” as a pivotal force around which family and society are formed is by no means the monopoly of muslim culture. Research in Latin America, Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, Asia and the Far East, as well northern and sub-Saharan Africa, shows that patriarchal models of honour dominate cultural and social arrangements. The threat to women’s basic human rights and personal safety is severe in these environments, where perpetrators of honour-restoring violence neither see themselves as wrongdoers, nor as seen as wrongdoers by their society. In the preceding example from July 2005, the perpetrators were required to carry out the judgment on orders from a village council in a rural area in Pakistan where tribal customs still hold sway.

Honour crimes have been described as a “retrogressive patriarchal tradition”/. They are based on the idea that a man’s honour is predicated largely on his ability to control the behavior, especially sexual, of his womenfolk. Institutions that foster male domination and sexual segregation have accordingly become fundamental to the social order in such societies.

In a context that would be considered extraordinary outside of these communities, a father, a brother or uncle may be the perpetrator of femicide and not consider it a crime or anything other than the right thing to do. “This is my daughter’s wedding night and those people are pretending my daughter is not a virgin,” an Algerian father shouts to doctors at 3 a.m. in a hospital emergency room. “I want you to examine her and clear my honour. I swear if she is not a virgin I will kill her right now.” Loss of virginity, or perceived loss of virginity, brings permanent dishonour to an unmarried woman and her family. The only way to cleanse the family honour is to kill the woman.

In these cultures, the police and judiciary display gender bias in favour of men who have killed women or girls for alleged breaches of honour. Where there is legislation, it is often ineffective in prosecutions and frequently regarded as Western or modern/urban by communities that predominantly live according to centuries-old customary law and informal tribal jurisdiction.

Documented cases from Brazil, Palestine, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and Lebanon (amongst many other countries) illustrate present-day examples of lenient judgments for wife murdering. This exists on a universal scale and therefore does “not result from religious or cultural factors but from a shared attitude to do with a woman’s worth and their proper role in society. In such cases the perpetrator may even be exonerated.

In these contexts what can we say of the perpetrators? Are they individuals guilty of gross human rights abuses and murder or are they part of a culture, a system which is collectively perpetrating these abuses?”

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Dowry crimes and bride-price abuse

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“The persistence of dowry crimes

As many analysts and women’s activists are quick to point out, femicide by husbands is not unique to India, nor is it more prevalent there than in many other parts of the world. The rate of intimate-partner violence in the United States, for example, is at least commensurate with that of India when compared on the basis of population. The women’s movement in India, however, has gone to great lengths to publicize this particular form of violence against women, shedding light on the combined forces – including the lack of basic human rights and the tolerance of violence against them – that put some women and girls in mortal danger at the hands of their partners.

Although India outlawed the modern dowry system in 1961, the practice has escalated among the expanding middle class, crossing religious, socioeconomic and ethnic boundaries. The National Crimes Record Bureau of the Government of India recorded 6,917 dowry-related deaths in 1998, a 15 percent increase over the number reported in 1997. Because incidents are grossly underreported, these statistics probably represent only a small sampling of the violence occurring across India every day. In 1999, the founder of the International Society against Dowry and Bride Burning in India estimated that 25,000 brides are killed or maimed each year as a result of dowry disputes. In 2000, a United Nations report estimated that on average five Indian women a day were killed in “accidental” kitchen fires by husbands whose demands for dowry payments had not been met. “Mina” is one of these statistics.

Beaten and harassed by her husband for almost four years for not bringing in enough dowry, Mina eventually left him and filed a harassment case with the local police. Her husband convinced her to return to him, however, and shortly thereafter she suffered a fatal “accident”. According to her husband and his family, Mina “fell on a chimney.” As she lay dying from the burns that covered more than 94 percent of her body, Mina was asked by police – as is customary – to make a declaration regarding the accident. She did so, absolving her husband and his family of any responsibility for her death.

From empowerment to exploitation

A chief historic motivation for bestowing dowry, as practiced in ancient Greece, Rome, India and medieval Europe, was to provide a degree of financial autonomy to a bride, how otherwise had little or no right to property after marriage. According to various traditions, dowry might flow from the groom and/or his family to the bride – thus ensuring her economic wellbeing in the event of her husband’s death or the dissolution of the marriage – or from the bride’s parents to the bride and her new husband, as a form of bequest, or premortem inheritance, for their daughter.

Now practiced primarily in Asian cultures, dowry payment in its current manifestation typically involves the transfer of wealth from the parents of the bride to the groom and his family. Although women and girls are no longer the direct beneficiaries, some researchers maintain that the practice still confers benefits to the bride by enhancing her status in the marital home. Evidence from India, however, indicates that the positive effects of dowry for wives have more than diminished. Once considered a beneficent and even spiritual act observed only by the wealthiest and holiest castes (with the lower castes practicing the more pragmatic tradition of bride price, involving compensation by the groom’s family to the bride’s family for the loss of human capital), the dowry system today often functions more as a commercial transaction and has been resolutely embraced by the middle and lower classes.

India’s modern dowry: groom price

Several theories have been advanced to explain why the middle and lower classes in India replaced the custom of bride price with the dowry system. Some suggest that it was an attempt by lower casts to emulate higher castes. Dowry payment became a status symbol, one that bestowed greater respectability on the bride and her family and increased the likelihood of the bride “marrying up”. It continues today because of caste-related systems of wealth dispersion. Another hypothesis contends that the interrelated influences of colonialism and the rise of a male-dominated market economy led to the devaluation of women, who lost their productive worth.

Others cite demographic shifts in South Asia as a possible reason for the change. Reductions in overall mortality that began about 60 years ago have resulted in there being more young people than old in the region. Because women are likely to marry at a younger age than men, there is a surplus of marriageable women. Increasingly inflated dowry payments are sometimes six times the bride’s family’s annual income. These dowries now function as a groom price – a means for young women to compete for respectable husbands. According to this hypothesis, recent declines in fertility and increases in sex-selective abortions should reverse the trend of escalating dowries over time and may even result in a return to bride price as the shortage of eligible women and girls results in men competing for wives.”

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Honour Crimes

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“A culturally condoned atrocity

A young Bangladesh woman was flogged to death by order of village clerics for “immoral behaviour”. An Egyptian man paraded the head of his daughter on a stick through the streets of his neighborhood after he killed her for besmirching his name. A teenager’s throat was slit in Turkey because a love ballad was dedicated to her over the radio. A Pakistani woman was gunned down by her own family in the presence of her human rights lawyer for pursuing a divorce from her abusive husband. A 13-year-old Turkish girl’s husband slit her throat in a public square after pulling her out of a cinema and accusing her of being a prostitute. A 35-year-old Jordanian man shot and killed his sister for reporting to the police that she had been raped. A Turkish girl was killed by her father for telling the authorities that she had been raped and then refusing his demand that she marry the rapist. A 29-year-old woman was dragged from her house in Afghanistan by her husband and local officials stoned her to death for committing adultery, while the man with whom she was alleged to have had an affair was whipped and then freed.

Each of these executions was committed within the past five years in the name of “honour”. Many of the perpetrators received no criminal penalties; others served only short sentences. Considered justifiable punishment for a wide range of perceived offences, contemporary honour crimes are based on archaic codes of social conduct that severely circumscribe female behavior while at the same time legitimizing male violence against women.

Honour crimes are typically engineered by male family members but often tacitly or explicitly condoned by the community and/or the state. In many countries the responsibility for the murder itself is assigned to an underage male, thus ensuring a (reduced) juvenile sentence in the event the case is prosecuted. In most instances, the murderer is hailed as a “true man”. It is also not unheard of for female family members to act as accomplices to the killing or even to carry out the murder itself.

Global prevalence

In recent reports, both the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial and Summary Executions have highlighted the egregious type of violence against women, citing incidents in Bangladesh, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, India, Italy, Pakistan, Brazil, Ecuador, Uganda, Morocco, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen, as well as among migrant communities in Germany, France, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Honour crimes also have been reported in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The actual scale of the problem is impossible to determine. In many cases deaths are not registered; in others murders are made to look like suicides, or women are forced or induced by their families to kill themselves. Burns or acid attacks not resulting in death often are attributed to accidents, a claim which victims may not refute for fear of further reprisals. In societies where these crimes occur, protection and support are often extended to the perpetrator rather than to the victim.

Despite the lack of reliable statistical data, estimates based on reviews of police reports and court dockets, newspaper articles and other sources in a variety of countries suggest that thousands of women and girls are murdered each year in the name of honour. Anecdotal evidence from Pakistan, for example, suggests that more than 1,000 women are victims of honour crimes annually. Over one-third of femicides in Jordan are thought to be such killings. In Turkey, an annual report of the Human Rights Association concluded that more than half of women killed by family members in 2003 were victims of honour crimes.

In 1997, the former attorney general of the Palestinian National Authority suggested that 70 percent of all murders of women in Gaza and the West Bank were honour crimes. In the same year, as many as 400 honour killings took place in Yemen, and 57 were reported in Egypt. In late 2004, 117 murders in the United Kingdom were being investigated as possible honour killings. In Lebanon, 36 honour crimes were reported between 1996 and 1998.

According to the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, the number of honour killings “is on the rise as the perception of what constitutes honour and what damages it widens.” Its global prevalence suggests that honour crimes are not unique to specific cultures, religions or classes. In fact, the justification has its roots in various social and legal systems around the world.”

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Male Perpetration: Part 2

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“Making man myths

Cross-cultural studies reveal that in most communities simple anatomical maleness is not enough to be a man. Real manhood lies elsewhere and is often a “precarious or artificial state that boys must win against powerful odds.” Does this “masculine mystique” encourage toughness, dominance and extreme competitiveness at the expense of honest emotion, empathy and communication?

Violence against women is more predominant in cultures where the idea of manhood is linked to entitlement to power or male honor. Historically, wars have been intensely masculine endeavors and the majority of all warriors, soldiers, admirals, police, militias and prison wardens are and have been men. In addition, bureaucrats, politicians and those who monopolize the systems of collective institutional violence throughout the world are men.

As boys become men within these societies, attributes of action, decisiveness, aggression and supremacy are prized and closely associated with “manhood”. These qualities, however fallacious, are perpetuated and considered the “natural” order and the preserve of masculinity. The expression of these characteristics in different societies can range from subtle to overt. Socialization of this kind negatively impacts both women and men. A recent publication from Brazil called Dying to Be Men - based on studies of violent male behavior in the United States, the Caribbean, Brazil and Nigeria – suggests that because young men are losing their lives in their attempts to embody certain models of masculinity, they are literally “dying to be men”.

In many non-Western societies, strict social rules that perpetuate the notion of the dominant male also deny women access to public life, private property, or even joint custody of their children. A woman is the protected possession of a man – his housekeeper, cook, monogamous sex partner and mother of his children. Even in countries that are considered more advanced in terms of democracy and representation – those with gender-sensitive legislation and significant structural equality between the sexes – violence against women continues. Many observers blame the influence of modern media, in particular television, films and advertising, for both subtly and explicitly perpetuating patriarchal role models for men and women.

Myriam Miedzan’s Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link Between Maculinity and Violence examines how and why males are increasingly resorting to violence and what society can do about it. “As long as male behavior is taken to be the norm,” she writes, “there can be no serious questioning of male traits and behavior. A norm is by definition a standard of judging; it is not itself subject to judgment.”

Violence and Sexual Abuse in marriage

In South Africa, researchers for the Medical Research Council estimated in 2004 that male partners kill their girlfriends or spouses at the rate of one every six hours – the highest mortality rate for domestic violence ever recorded, they claim. According to the United Nations report that same year, domestic violence accounted for more than 60 percent of murder cases in court in Harare, Zimbabwe. In Zambia, a recent study found that nearly half the women surveyed had been beaten by a male partner.

Outside Africa and throughout the world, similar statistics for domestic abuse are staggering, with only a small minority of communities apparently free from violence. “For God’s Sake!” exploded one Nigerian when questioned about his wife-beating. “You are head of the home as the man – you must have a home submissive to you.”

A high number of women who report domestic violence also report rape within their relationship. “My sex life in marriage has been dominated by rape, rape, rape – and nothing to do with love,” concluded one woman from Latin America, echoing similar claims by women interviewed in different contexts around the world.

All too often sex in marriage is not a mutually pleasurable act but a brutal service exacted by force, threat or social convention.

According to one expert on domestic violence, “At an individual level, some men are more likely to sexually assault women: men who have hostile and negative sexual attitudes towards women, who identify with traditional images of masculinity and male gender role privilege, who believe in rape stereotypes, and who see violence as manly and desirable. … Men with more traditional, rigid and misogynistic gender-role attitudes are more likely to practice marital violence.”

The perpetrators of rape within marriage are not readily characterized as any particular group. Using force in marriage to gain sexual access is a cross-cultural and cross-societal is not the monopoly of any economic or social class. In many cases those who are accused or – in isolated instances – convicted of rape in marriage may not conform to popular notions of what a rapist is. Perpetrators of rape in cultures that expect and condone the brutal deflowering of a young bride (sometimes with knives) may be committing a severe assault and rights abuse, but they would be surprised to be labeled a rapist, which illustrates the complexity of dealing with these issues on a global basis.

There are common myths about perpetrators of domestic violence. These include the notion that domestic violence is rare or that perpetrators are somehow “abnormal” men who cannot control their anger. In reality, most men who beat their wives do not exhibit violent or antisocial traits outside the home. The idea that perpetrators are driven to violence by the behavior of their partners is also a myth, as perpetrators are often unaffected by their partners’ efforts to change or avoid so-called “provocative” behavior. The notion that poverty causes violence is a myth as well: Poverty can be a contributing factor to domestic abuse, but intimate-partner violence exists at every socioeconomic level.

Whatever the myths may be, it is indisputable that domestic violence has especially frightening and tragic implications for victims, who are locked socially, economically and often emotionally into the abusing relationship and share a home with their abuser. In many countries, the environment outside the home is fiercely unwelcoming to women who leave or divorce violent husbands, seek refuge or protective custody away from their partners, or seek legal redress. In Nigeria, where there are over 130 million people and wife battering is widespread, there are only two shelters for battered women.

Law enforcement in many countries will not intervene in what is still regarded as a domestic quarrel, despite evidence indicating that without intervention (legal or social) abusers are unlikely to seek rehabilitation or stop their battering behavior. In most cases law enforcement and the judiciary are run entirely by men, who are part of the patriarchal society that tacitly or overtly perpetuates attitudes that tolerate beating women. Numerous reports from Latin America, the Middle East and Central and South Asia cite examples where law enforcement officials have delivered wives who had been beaten back to the very families and perpetrators from whom they sought refuge.

Training programs and special units of law enforcement to assist victims of domestic violence have been developed only recently in a select number of countries. It was originally believed that if a victim of domestic violence could leave the abusive relationship the violence would stop, but now it is widely accepted that leaving does not guarantee an end to the abuse. In fact, separation is often the riskiest time for women, as many abusive men continue to harass, stalk and harm their victims long after the separation, sometimes resulting in murder. In one United States study, 70 percent of the reported injuries from domestic violence occurred after a couple separated.

Many working in the field maintain that the most effective way to stop perpetrators abusing their partners is arrest and incarceration. Legally and socially, however, societies still struggle with the complexities of domestic violence, the gravity of the crime and their overall commitment to tackling it.

Great strides have been made in terms of highlighting the scale and scope of intimate-partner violence over the last two decades. While the problem remains great, there is some evidence of progress, particularly in settings where women’s rights and choices have increased and they have gained more economic independence. But in more traditional societies, where a woman is secondary to the male head of the house and where male domination or patriarchy is more overt, the overwhelming majority of violence against women goes unreported, forcing women to suffer in silence. Documenting the prevalence of male violence against women in the home in more traditional cultures warrants further research.

In recent years, much has been made of certain studies indicating that men are also victims of domestic abuse where the perpetrators are women. Some suggest that there is a degree of “gender symmetry” in domestic violence – that women abuse their partners at similar rates as men – but a closer look at the methodology used in these studies casts doubts over the veracity of these claims. Opposing studies show that only 5 percent of domestic violence cases involve female perpetrators. An examination of the reality of power relations, access to economic resources and possibilities for separation or divorce indicates that by any standards the violence and vulnerability of men who are abused by female partners is of a different calibre that the pandemic of abuse of women by male partners throughout the world.”

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The Prevalence of Male perpetration

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“The overwhelming majority of violence against women and girls is committed every day and in every nation by men. Where sexual violence and exploitation takes place against men and/or boys, the perpetrators are, again, overwhelmingly male. In categories where violence is embedded in tradition, such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and “honour” crimes, women may also play an active role.

Despite the progress that has been made to introduce legal and social reforms to address gender inequality, violence against women and girls continues. Evidence suggests, in fact, that violations such as trafficking, rape, child abuse, child prostitution and pornography are on the rise. The majority of studies of gender-based violence echo the findings of two psychologists whose research led them to conclude, “Most sexual offenders are men. Men commit most of the aberrant and deviant sexual behaviours such as rape, child molestation and exhibitionism. …” Furthermore, and more relevantly, when females are involved in aberrant or illegal sexual behaviour, coercion and violence is less commonly employed.

Even though most acts of violence are committed by men – and studies confirm that men have a higher propensity for violent behaviour than women – not all men behave violently. Are men genetically motivated, or hard-wired, in a significantly different way than women? Or does society teach the sexes to act the way they do?

The nature/nurture polarity

Most researchers reject the notion that biology can be blamed for violent behavior. Male violence, they say, is not genetically based but is instead perpetuated by a model of masculinity that permits and even encourages men to be aggressive. “Men’s monopoly of violence stems from lifelong training in sexist models of masculinity.” Anthropological research shows that domestic violence is virtually nonexistent in some societies, and therefore not an inevitable human condition.

Generally, the “nurture” position rejects the idea that men have a natural propensity to violence of that men have “uncontrollable” violent and sexual urges. In the case of intimate-partner abuse, for example, observers point out that men are able to control themselves in settings where the social or professional cost of their behavior would be too high, but are unwilling to exercise the same restraint when they are behind closed doors.

Those advancing this perspective challenge apologists for male violence, who use biological arguments or the “psychopathological model” for male sexual violence to explain men’s behavior. Instead, they insist that these men are not “sick” or pathological and are responsible for their actions, behaving reprehensibly, with free, conscious choice.

The counterargument to this opinion – which is regularly reinforced and perpetuated via popular culture and religious dogma – claims that men are captive of their libidos. This view maintains that the historic and global evidence of male’s natural aggression and the biological imperative cannot be ignored. While socialization may play an important role in how people behave in different societies and at different points in history, the “nature” position argues that sexual violence is too widespread and too overwhelmingly perpetrated by males to suggest that men and women are not motivated by different forces. These arguments appear to echo 19^th-century pseudo-medical claims promoted by some scientists that men were a breed apart and slaves to uncontrollable testosterone, where male promiscuity is seen as a critical vestige of evolutionary forces conferring “selective advantage” on men who impregnate multiple partners.

Other theorists, however, are situated between the two poles of “nature” and “nurture”. They acknowledge a degree of “natural male inclination”, which in combination with repeated negative socialisation reinforces violent characteristics. In patriarchal societies, a significant manifestation of male aggression is man’s perpetration of sexual coercion and violence against women.

Popular perceptions

Irrespective of this debate, there is a virtually univeral de facto acceptance amongst people and communities worldwide that men and women have different natures and different roles to play. Whatever the origin of male violence, most people are caught up in their societies and the times they live and, as a result, may play a strong part in the maintenance of these stereotypes.

In many countries, gender roles are deeply entrenched and reinforced by cultural norms, to such an extent that questioning the status quo involves risk. Even in countires that are seemingly less bound by tradition, where equal rights are codified in law and widely accepted, these stereotypes still dominate the popular mindset.

The United States and Australia are examples of industrialized countries where sexual stereotyping and violence-supporting attitudes remain entrenched among the majority. High incidents of rape, domestic abuse and child abuse in these countries are thought to be linked to a general acceptance of these stereotypes. One study recently estimated that during a 12-month period in the United States, more than 302,000 women and almost 93,000 men experienced a completed or attempted rape. In a 1995 study in Australia, 37 percent of the male participants disagreed with the statement that “Women rarely make false claims of rape.” One in six respondents to the survey agreed that “Women who are raped often ask for it.” Rape is, of course, only an indirect indicator of such beliefs or stereotypes.

Psychological research demonstrates strong evidence that violence is a learned behavior that may be passed down the generations. “The highest risk marker for a man to use violence against his wife and child is early exposure to violence in his childhood home.” A negative finding when one considers the current number of boys witnessing their fathers’ violent behavior, but also one that offers hope, perhaps, that nonviolence can be similarly learned. “

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Elizabeth’s Story

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“Elizabeth” is 17 and pregnant with her second child. She and her husband live with Elizabeth’s mother and have been married for eight months. Her husband hits her when he is drunk, and the beatings usually coincide with the arrival of his monthly paycheck. She is worried that he will kill her someday — he almost did the last time he attacked her.

“I came home from work, and my husband was drunk. Later that evening, he started to insult me. He hit me, and I asked him to respect my mother’s home. My husband said he didn’t care and continued to hit me — on my arms, not my face. Then he grabbed my shirt and punched me twice. I put his clothes in a box, left them outside, and told him he had to leave.

“He stabbed me and ran away. The neighbours caught him — the guy who did almost got stabbed as well. My mother was shouting, ‘He killed my daughter!’ There was a lot of blood — he had perforated my intestines and I had to hold my hand on the wound. When I walked out of the house, I fainted. They brought me to hospital in a pickup truck. I stayed in hospital for a week, and I lost an ovary. My husband knew that I was pregnant when he attacked me.

“I want the police to keep him under arrest for a while. There is going to be a trial. I feel threatened because if he didn’t kill me this time he will kill me the next time. I am worried he will come after the baby and me. We women are alone. There is no one to protect us.”

Elizabeth’s mother witnessed the attack, “Some of us women take these men to the police station. But then the men’s families try to convince us to stop the process.”

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Child Marriage: Part 2

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“The Legal Context

Despite national and international law pertaining to minimum age and consent in marriage, many young girls around the world are still at risk. In 15 countries, the legal age of marriage is 16. Even when legal protections against child marriage do exist, they may be ambiguous, allow for dual existence of customary and civil law and have limited enforcement mechanisms. Some legal provisions, for example, may allow traditional law to override statutory law, and therefore restrictions against early marriage in state law may not apply to customary marriages.

Moreover, in countries “where there is a discrepancy between the minimum age of marriage for boys and girls, it is consistently lower for girls.” According to CEDAW, these discrepancies “assume incorrectly that women have a different rate of intellectual development from men, or that their stage of physical and intellectual development at marriage is immaterial.” The national laws of Cameroon, Jordan, Morocco, Uganda and Yemen do not specifically accord women the right to consent before marriage. Among the “vast majority” of countries around the world that have codified a women’s equal right to choose a marriage partner, legal provisions are often “merely symbolic” – and as a result unenforced or subject to wide exceptions.

Legislative provisions in many countries allow for child marriage with parental consent, which in the context of traditional societies does little to preserve the rights of girl children. In Algeria, Chad, Costa Rica, Lebanon, Libya, Romania and Uruguay, the law allows a perpetrator of rape – including rape of a minor – to be pardoned of his crime if he marries his victim. In the case of a young victim, stigma, shame, coercion and ignorance of the law, along with a multitude of other factors, may prevent her from exercising her legal right to refuse such a marriage. In Ethiopia, illegal “abduction marriages”, where men kidnap young girls and consummate the marriage with rape, remain prevalent in some rural settings. In a study conducted among 227 Ethiopian wives, 60 percent said they had been abducted before age 15, and 93 percent before age 20.

The failure to prioritize women’s and girl’s rights

Child marriage predominates in traditional societies around the world, where the desires and needs of parents and community may override considerations for the individual development and wellbeing of a girl child. The patriarchal values buttressing these cultures further erode any rights that might otherwise be afforded a young girl. The fact that marrying young maximizes a female’s reproductive lifespan and thus ensures large families justifies the custom of child marriage and ignores the health impact of such a tradition on young wives.

The prevalence of child marriage also may be linked to the economics of poverty. Young girls in certain communities in Africa will generate more bride price because as virgins they are less likely to have HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Conversely, African parents in resource-poor settings who are worried about not being able to find men who can afford a high bride price may prevent a daughter from completing schooling for fear that an education will increase her cost. Once a girl has left school, she is much more likely to get married. In the Asian societies where dowry customs dominate, girls may be married off early because dowry doubles once a girl matures. In Bangladesh, for example, dowry doubles once a girl reaches the age of 15, because she is considered less “marriageable”.

Other motives for child marriage include controlling a young girl’s sexuality and curbing any manifestations of independence. Committing a pubescent or even prepubescent girl to marriage reduces the likelihood of premarital liaisons, which is important when the sexual purity of girls and women is seen as a community prerogative and the basis of family and tribal honour. In societies where subservience to husbands is requisite in marriage, young brides offer the additional benefit of being easier to mould into deferential wives.

Child marriage and gender-based violence

Child marriage is a form of gender-based violence that leads to a range of other forms of violence. Research suggests, for example, that sexual assault may be more common among wives who marry young, due at least in part to the power inequities between older husbands and younger wives. Indian girls from Calcutta who married early reported that their husbands had forced them to have intercourse before they had started menstruating. Despite protestations of pain and lack of desire, 80 percent of these girls said that their husbands continue to force them to have sexual relations.

Girls who marry early may also be at greater risk of physical violence at the hands of their husbands and in-laws. In Jordan, 26 percent of domestic incidents reported in 2000 were committed against wives who were under age 18. As with sexual violence, this increased risk may be associated with age and power differentials. Lack of social networks and economic assets, as well as low self-esteem, make child brides less likely to leave abusive husbands and more likely to tolerate the abuse. In studies in Benin, India and Turkey, for example, 62 percent to 67 percent of young wives – as opposed to 36 percent and 42 percent of older wives – believed that their husbands were justified in using physical violence against them.

Girls who try to escape early or abusive marriages risk retribution from their husbands as well as their natal families, including further abuse, imprisonment or even death. The Commission on the Status of Women in Pakistan, where the honour killings are often linked to domestic violence, reported in 1989 that “men are constantly fighting to retrieve their women because they have run away.” Data from prisons in Afghanistan’s capital city in Kabul in 2004 indicated that the majority of female inmates had been married before age 16, and that incarceration was highly correlated to child marriage. “Zabia” is one such case:

“When [Zabia] was 10 years old her parents sold her in marriage to a 50-year-old man who was deaf and dumb. She was raped on her wedding night. In the years that followed, [Zabia] ran away to her father’s house some seven or eight times. Every time she returned, her father beat her and held her in chains until her husband came to retrieve her. She finally escaped to the city, where she met a kind woman who took her in. After some time, [Zabia] met a young male relative of the woman, became engaged and married him. She had been happily married for six months and was pregnant when she told her second husband her true history. The second husband, who accepted her past, went to meet [Zabia’s] parents to tell them of her whereabouts and happy marriage and invited them to visit their daughter. Instead, [Zabia’s} parents reported the couple to the police, who imprisoned them for illegal marriage.”

Husbands of young wives are often significantly older, and therefore more likely to die before their wives. While it may seem a reprieve in cases of violent marriages, lack of property or inheritance rights, as well as high rates of illiteracy among young brides, puts those widows at great risk for multiple forms of exploitation. In certain parts of India, a girl whose husband has died may be given in nata to a widower in the family. Although officially designated his wife, she may become “the common property of all the men in the family.” In parts of Africa, a widow is remarried, according to the practice of levirate, to a brother of her deceased husband. Any resulting children are given the name of the deceased husband, thus ensuring the continuation of his lineage. If a widow refuses to marry her brother-in-law, she not only risks being cast out of his family, but also losing custody of her children and any rights to her husband’s property. Widowed women also can be traded as commodities in dispute negotiations between families or communities – given as a wife, for example, from one family to another to reinstate the honour of an aggrieved man and his clan.

The multiple health risks of child marriage

In addition to the physical dangers associated with domestic violence, child marriage poses many other health risks. Because of the greater permeability of their vaginal tissue and other biological factors like hormone fluctuations, girls are more vulnerable than mature women to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Their age, limited life experience and inferior status also make it more difficult for young wives to negotiate safer sex.

While marriage to girls is considered a protective measure for husbands, it may have the opposite effect on their wives, especially in polygynous societies. In a recent study undertaken in Rwanda and cited in a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report on child marriages, 25 percent of girls who became pregnant at 17 or younger were infected with HIV, even though many reported only having sex with their husbands. The study found that a higher incidence of HIV infection was directly correlated to a younger age of sexual intercourse and first pregnancy. In findings from rural Uganda, girls aged 13 to 19 who were HIV-positive were twice as likely to be married as girls who were HIV-negative. For young wives, “abstinence is not an option – those who try to negotiate condom use commonly face violence and rejection.”

The leading cause of death for 15- to 19-year-old girls worldwide is complications from pregnancy and child-bearing. According to public-health experts, for every girl that dies during pregnancy or childbirth, 30 more will suffer injuries, infections and disabilities. And the risks are not limited to the mother: If a girl is under the age of 18 when she gives birth, her baby’s chance of dying in its first year of life is 60 percent higher than that of a baby born to an older mother. Moreover, the extended reproductive span of a girl who is married early puts her and her children at risk due to a greater number of pregnancies and deliveries. According to one study, women who marry before age 19 will have two to four times more children than those who marry after age 25.

The additional burden of obstetric fistula

One of the most physically and psychologically debilitating effects of early child-bearing is fistula, a rupture of tissue that results in an opening between the vagina and the bladder or the rectum, or both, which is reparable only with surgery. Primarily caused by obstructed labour, fistula is closely linked to marriage and child-bearing among girls between 10 and 15 years of age. In one 1995 study in Niger, for example, 88 percent of women with fistula were in this age group when they were married. As will all pregnancy-related injuries, young married girls in resource-poor settings are least likely to get treatment for fistula. With leaking urine and feces, a malodorous girl suffering an untreated fistula is likely to be ostracized by her community and divorced by her husband.

Child marriage is so common in Ethiopia that doctors at the Fistula Hospital, based in the capital city of Addis Ababa, operate on approximately 1,200 girls a year. Those who are of and manage to find transport to the hospital are probably only a small proportion of the young women needing treatment.

An urgent human rights concern

The Forum on Marriage and the Rights of Women and Girls, from which much of the information included in this chapter has been drawn, is a network of nongovernmental organizations with international affiliates that shares “a vision of marriage as a sphere in which women and girls have inalienable rights.” The early work of the Forum highlighted the fact that very little is being achieved at either the international or national level to address the global problem of child marriage.

The Forum’s most recent report in 2003 emphasized that there is considerable work to be done to end the practice of child marriage. Much of this effort involves lobbying governments to adopt and enforce laws that both prohibit child marriage and ensure that girls have equal access to education. Just as important, however, is changing the attitude and behavior of community and religious leaders, whose complicity allows child marriage to continue. Finally, the Forum asked for increased support to programs that empower young girls, to help them realize that their futures need not be preordained by customs that deprive them of their rights to mental, social and physical wellbeing.
Agencies such as the United Nations Fund for Population Assistance and UNICEF have started to demand action to end child marriage, while international nongovernmental organizations, including Population Council and the International Center for Research on Women, have pioneered initiatives to research child marriage, raise awareness and inform policy discussion. Despite some of these gains, the magnitude of the problem requires greater effort, not only through prevention, but also through prevention, but also through supporting girls who are already in child marriages. Policy makers, elected officials and community and religious leaders, as well as individuals, all have a critical role in making a difference in the lives of girls and young women.”

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Intimate Partner Violence

“On average, 36,000 women in the Russian Federation are beaten on a daily basis by their husbands or partners. In Pakistan, an estimated 90 percent of married women are abused by their husbands.

According to a 2002 report approximately 1.8 million women were assaulted by an intimate partner in Spain, of which only 43,000 reported the assault to the police. Eighty-three percent of female homicide victims in the Dominican Republic in 2003 were killed by their current or past spouses or long-term partners. In the United States, a woman is battered, usually by her husband, every 15 seconds. In the United Kingdom, on average 120 women are murdered by their intimate partners each year.”

The quote above and all the quoted text below is copyright, “Broken Bodies – Broken Dreams: Violence against Women Exposed” (IRIN):

“Defining intimate-partner violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a phenomenon without cultural, racial or geographic boundaries. Occurring in every country around the globe, it is one of the most pervasive types of violence against women and girls worldwide. Alternatively referred to as “domestic violence” or “spousal abuse”, intimate-partner violence includes a broad spectrum of harmful behaviours, from physical and sexual violence to psychological cruelty and manipulation. Although some of its aspects are culturally specific — like the prevalence of gun use in intimate-partner homicide in Western countries as opposed to kerosene or acid in parts of Asia — many characteristics of this abuse are remarkably similar. Physical violence can range from pushing, slapping, arm-twisting or hairpulling to severe assault and battery. Sexual violence might include forced or coerced intercourse or other sex acts, as well as dictating reproductive-health decisions such as contraception and child-bearing. Psychological cruelty often entails threats and intimidation, humiliation and enforced isolation from friends and family. It can also consist of other controlling behaviours, such as restricting access to money and other resources. While both men and women may suffer violence by a partner, the “single most powerful risk marker for becoming a victim of violence is to be a woman.”

Findings from countries as disparate as the United States, India, Colombia, Zambia and China have confirmed that intimate partner violence is distinctly gender-biased. The rates, the levels of violence and the negative health impacts associated with it are much more significant for women than for men. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), women are most vulnerable to violence within intimate and familial relationships, whereas men are much more likely to be attacked by a stranger or acquaintance. Moreover, women suffer the ill effects of IPV disproportionately when compared with men. Research from Canada has found that women are three times more likely than men to be injured as a result of abuse by a spouse or boyfriend, five times more likely to require medical attention or hospitalisation, and five times more likely to report fearing for their lives. Several triggers for violence that are notably consistent throughout the world include: perceived disobedience of a female partner, suspicions of a female partner’s infidelity, failing to care “adequately” for children, questioning a man about money and refusing sex. In other words, violenceoften results when a man believes his wife or girlfriend has contravened conventional gender roles. His violence serves to assert and maintain his authority and domination. Religious doctrine and cultural practices that promote proprietary relationships of husbands to their wives reinforce beliefs that legitimise and perpetuate partner violence. According to one researcher, “Beating a wife to chastise or to discipline her is seen as culturally and religiously justified [in Pakistan]. … Because men are perceived as the ‘owners’ of their wives, it is necessary to show them who is boss so that future transgressions are discouraged.”In some settings, women have internalised these patriarchal social norms, as evidenced in a comment by a female research respondent in India: “If the woman makes a mistake or if she is unfaithful to him then the husband can beat her. He does have the right to do so because the woman has failed to carry out her work duties properly. Being a man he can get angry quickly and will slap, but then later he will be affectionate so we should not make a big issue of this.”

The global enormity of intimate-partner violence

The silence, stoicism and shame of its victims make it difficult to generate reliable estimates of just how prevalent intimate-partner violence is. Even so, a growing body of quantitative research — the majority of it undertaken within the last 10 to 15 years — has contributed to a better understanding of the extent of this problem around the world. Population-based data on domestic violence compiled from 55 countries indicate that in over half of these countries, at least one in every three female survey respondents acknowledged some form of physical violence in the context of an intimate relationship. In approximately 10 of these countries, on average one out of every two women reported physical abuse by a husband or boyfriend. Research further suggests that those who experience physical violence often suffer multiple acts of aggression that are perpetrated over time.In some cases these incidents are followed by a period of contrition, or at least calm, in which the perpetrator may try to minimise or deny the severity of the violence, or remorsefully promise that it will not happen again. It most instances, the violence is repeated, with greater frequency and intensity. The experience of survivor Ana Christina, from Nicaragua, illustrates the repetitive nature of partner violence: “After the blows, he always came back to court me, bought me clothes. And afterwards, he always said, ‘Forgive me. I won’t do it again.’ But then he always did the same afterwards. And then my grandmother would say tome, ‘Child, what are you going to do with candies in hell?’ ”At least two patterns of intimate-partner violence have been identified by the WHO: “Common couple violence”, in which simmering frustrations sporadically manifest themselves through physical aggression; and “battering”, which involves a spiralling escalation of physical violence and psychological terror. Whereas common couple violence is usually a spontaneous expression of frustration or anger, battering is systematic. And although men figure prominently as perpetrators of both types of violence, they are overwhelmingly represented among those who batter. Fear and intimidation are two hallmarks of battering, employed by the perpetrator to establish, reestablish and/or maintain power and control over his partner.Physical battering may often be accompanied by sexual violence. While an increasing number of governments are adopting laws that recognise marital rape as a crime, forced sex in marriage is not considered a crime in most countries. Lack of legislation on marital rape both reflects and reinforces the presumption of many men, as well as some women, that it is a wife’s obligation to comply with her husband’s sexual demands. In Zimbabwe, for example, a woman who refuses to have sex with her husband risks being “hunted with bad luck” by his spirit after he dies. As a result, and also because of the almost universal cultural prohibitions related to discussing intimate sexual behaviour, sexual violence is even more difficult to investigate than physical violence. Nevertheless, emerging data suggest that for women, “ironically, much non-consensual sex takes place within consensual unions.”In research gathered from nine countries, on average one in five women acknowledged being forced to have sex by her partner. Numbers can be significantly higher in select settings: Thirty percent of a sample of women in Bangkok, Thailand; 48 percent in Cusco, Peru; and 59 percent in Ethiopia reported being forced into sex by their partners. Evidence from Papua New Guinea and India, where forced sex was reported by one-half to two-thirds of research respondents, indicates that it is often initiated or accompanied by beatings, as one woman in Uganda confirmed:

“My husband would beat me to the point that he was too ashamed to take me to the doctor. He forced me to have sex with him and beat me if I refused. … Even when he was HIV-positive he still wanted sex. He refused to use a condom. He said he cannot eat sweets with the paper[wrapper] on.”

Perhaps the most invisible aspect of intimate-partner violence is psychological violence, though it is likely the most pervasive type of maltreatment that women in violent relationships are made to suffer. Psychological violence includes manipulative or threatening behaviours that are used to instil fear, such as punching walls, killing pets or stalking. It also includes verbal abuse, such as making comments that are derogatory, demeaning or embarrassing.

The impact of psychological violence can be as debilitating as physical or sexual violence, if not more so, as illustrated in the words of one woman from Nicaragua who suffered ongoing verbal abuse:

“He used to tell me, ‘You’re an animal, an idiot, you’re worthless.’ That made me feel even more stupid. I couldn’t raise my head. I think I still have scars from this. … I accepted it, because after a point, he had destroyed me by blows and psychologically.”

The implications for womenFor several decades, women’s rights activists and researchers around the world have described intimate-partner violence against women as a global human rights violation that undermines women’s integrity, freedom, wellbeing and participation in family and society. It is only in the last 10 years, however, that its serious and pervasive public-health implications have begun to receive international attention. In a 1997 report, the United States Surgeon General concluded that domestic violence poses the single largest threat to all American women — more than rape, muggings and car accidents combined. The Council of Europe similarly asserted that this type of violence accounts for more deaths and health complications than cancer or traffic accidents: Violence by partners is the major cause of death and disability for European women aged 16 to 44. A recent study of women aged 15 to 44 in Victoria, Australia, identified partner violence as the leading contributor to death, disability and illness, stating that it was “responsible for more of the disease burden than many well-known risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking and obesity.” Assault by a partner can result in a wide array of acute physical injuries. A 1998 report from the State Department of the United States indicated that 37 percent of all violence-related emergency-room visits by injured women were the result of physical abuse by a husband or boyfriend. It is also a major contributor to chronic disabilities and illness, including a variety of reproductive-health problems. A number of studies — from Canada, Chile, Egypt, Australia and Nicaragua, for example — have shown a high rate of partner abuse during pregnancy. “Sharofat”, a woman from Uzbekistan who eventually was abandoned by her husband, recalled the abuse she suffered during her marriage: “He beat me so hard that I lost my teeth. The beatings happened at least one time each month. He used his fists to beat me. He beat me most severely when I was pregnant. … The first time he beat me, and I lost the baby. I was in the hospital. The second time was only a few days before a baby was born, and my face was covered with bruises. He beat me and I went to my parents. My father refused to take me to a doctor. He said, ‘What will I say, her husband beats her?’ “ Considering the association between physical violence and pregnancy, it is especially alarming that women who experience partner violence may be more likely to have higher numbers of children. Research in Nicaragua showed that violence was correlated with larger families, but in most cases its onset preceded the advent of child-bearing. One hypothesis related to these findings is that women in violent partnerships may be less able to exercise control over contraception. A study from India found that unplanned pregnancies occurred more than twice as often in abusive relationships, especially when the violence included sexual abuse.

Physical and sexual violence by an intimate partner also increases the risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Findings from Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa demonstrate that women in violent relationships are at up to three times greater risk of contracting HIV than those in nonviolent partnerships. Research by Human Rights Watch in Uganda harshly illustrates this link:“Hadija Namaganda’s HIV-positive husband raped and beat her viciously during their marriage. During one brutal attack, he even bit off her ear. When he lay dying of AIDS and was too weak to beat her anymore, he ordered his younger brother to continue beating her. Now HIV-positive, Hadija recalled, ‘He used to force me to have sex with him after he became ill. He would accuse me of having other men. He said he would cut me up and throw me out. I didn’t know about condoms. We didn’t use them.’ ”HIV infection can be both a cause and a consequence of violence. The husband of one woman from the Dominican Republic told her, “If you have something [a sexually transmitted disease], I will kill you.”

Evidence from Africa, where women and girls are the largest and fastest growing risk group for HIV infection, indicates that women who fear reprisals from abusive husbands avoid or delay testing, disclosure and treatment for HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. In its most severe form, intimate-partner violence ends in murder. Approximately 120 women in the United Kingdom are killed each year by a husband or boyfriend. In Zambia, an estimated five women are killed by a male partner or family member each week. Studies from Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the United States have indicated that between 40 percent and 70 percent of women murder victims were killed by their husbands or boyfriends. In the Dominican Republic in 2003, the proportion of femicides committed by an intimate partner was as high as 83 percent. Even if a woman is not killed by her partner, the fear, helplessness and hopelessness that often accompany violent relationships may lead a woman to attempt suicide. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), multiple studies — from the United States, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Peru, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — have illustrated the causal link between suicide and partner violence. A woman who has been abused is up to 12 times more likely to try to kill herself than one who has not. In the United States, 35 percent to 40 percent of battered women attempt to end their lives. One of the most horrific demonstrations of suicidal behaviour among women victims of partner violence is self-immolation, or setting oneself on fire. Relative to other methods of suicide, self-immolation is unusual in that it is customarily limited to Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. Like other forms of suicide, self-immolation is not solely or even primarily restricted to women suffering from partner abuse. But when it is related to intimate-partner violence, self-immolation is a very powerful representation of the desperation women feel.

Other repercussions Women victimised by their partners are not alone in their misery, as their children usually suffer the consequences alongside them. Partner abuse has been shown to increase the risk of infant and early-child mortality and can further contribute to a host of emotional and behavioural problems for children who survive to witness the violence. Studies from Ireland, Mexico and Eritrea indicate that children living in abusive households regularly observe violence. The impact of bearing witness to such acts, according to findings from research in the United States, can be as damaging to a child as direct abuse. The fallout of domestic violence extends well beyond the households in which the abuse occurs. Providing public health, social welfare and protective services to victims and their children places an enormous financial strain on communities and nations. The indirect and long-term costs associated with increased morbidity and mortality, behavioural problems of children, transgenerational perpetuation of violence, work related absenteeism and job loss also take their toll on societies. For some developed countries such as Canada and the United States, the annual costs associated with IPV have been estimated in the billions of dollars. For developing countries, the measurable costs may be significantly lower, simply because services are not as established or widespread. Even in settings where costs are more difficult to measure, partner abuse has far-reaching consequences. It drains precious existing resources while at the same time handicapping the ability of women and children to contribute to social and economic progress. Responding to intimate-partner violence

In a study in Eritrea, women who had been beaten and abused by their partners were asked why they did not leave their relationships. Many responses expressed sentiments of powerlessness and futility: “He wouldn’t accept no. He wouldn’t accept that I was leaving.”“Would I walk away alive?”

“Just the kids — he’ll take them. That’s it, really.”

“Where would I live?”

“I was pregnant, and I thought he would hurt the baby and my family.”

These women, like others around the world, felt they had no escape from abuse. Their responses reflect some of the dynamics that reinforce intimate-partner violence: fear, poverty, and the lack of legal protection and social support. Addressing the problem requires an understanding of its basic ecology:the interplay of individual and cultural factors that foster abuse in homes, communities and societies. For this reason, much work has been done in recent years to improve local and international research capacity. In particular, the WHO has spearheaded multicountry studies on intimate-partner violence and, in the process, established global standards for ethical and methodologically sound approaches to investigating violence against women. International demographic and health survey experts also have devised methods to include standardised questions about intimate-partner violence in national-level research around the world. During the last 10 years, the outcomes of these efforts, in addition to the work undertaken by independent researchers and women’s activists, have produced an emerging portrait of the global magnitude of the problem, which in turn has provided an important basis for local, national and international advocacy. Most experts agree that the research conducted thus far has revealed only the tip of an iceberg, especially in developing countries. A considerable amount of work remains, particularly in terms of standardising research methods to improve comparability; investigating what puts women at risk, as well as what protects them from it; and understanding its impact.

The last 20 years of activism on the part of women’s and human rights groups has laid firm the foundation to combat intimate-partner violence. Evidence suggests that in the majority of countries across the globe, there are at least some small efforts being made to identify and address the issue. In some settings, those endeavours are widespread. While strategies vary according to culture, commitment and the availability of resources, almost all involve legislative and policy reform, as well as grassroots initiatives that support women’s rights. Strategies also seek to build the capacity of health, social-welfare and legal-justice systems to recognise, monitor and respond to IPV and ensure rapid and respectful care of women who have been abused. In addition, international, national and local media campaigns and education programmes have been developed to highlight the impact of intimate-partner violence.As a result of community mobilisation, education and advocacy efforts, many countries have made progress in introducing legislation against intimate-partner violence, though less so against marital rape. The number of projects that enhance responses to victims, especially in the areas of healthcare and police training, have grown. In some countries, support services include hotlines, safe houses and community centres.Still, too many countries fall short. In terms of law enforcement, governmental involvement and access to care. Research repeatedly shows that many victims do not use support services. Whether this is because of lack of access, lack of confidence in services, shame, resignation or fear of retribution, the end result is that many women around the world “suffer abuse silently”.

This should act as a clarion call to service providers and activists to evaluate the accessibility and value of victim-support activities. To date, very few programmes have been assessed for their effectiveness. In fact, monitoring and appraising interventions is one of the crucial steps towards improving local, national and international capacity to address the problem. In addition, comparatively little attention has been paid to improving prevention efforts. Many of the limited resources dedicated to intimate partner violence have naturally gone to ensuring the safety and welfare of victims, at both the individual and policy levels. The unfortunate side effect of this approach is that partner abuse “has largely been regarded as a woman’s problem.” While it is critical that women survive and recover from the violence they have suffered, significant additional resources must be earmarked for prevention if societies around the world are to reach the long-term goal of eradicating the problem. Developing prevention strategies is an area of great promise, particularly with regard to reducing the factors that lead men to act violently towards women. Model programmes for “male involvement” have been initiated in many countries, but their reach and impact is sorely inadequate when compared with the number of men who abuse their partners. And while programmes to engage men are crucial in the fight against intimate-partner violence, effective prevention requires the active engagement of all members of the community — men, women, boys and girls.The WHO has said the basis for change is the province of future generations, who “should come of age with better skills than their parents generally had for managing their relationships and resolving the conflicts within them, with greater opportunities for their future, and with more appropriate notions of how men and women can relate to each other and share power.”Winning the worldwide fight against partner abuse requires fundamental social change that supports women’s human rights as well as their equal participation in all relationships, especially those that are most intimate.”

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