Stop Violence Against Women

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

External Document

AI Index: ACT 77/005/2006 (Public)
News Service No: 056
8 March 2006

“Surviving an abusive relationship is like surviving torture — the future narrows down to getting through the next few hours, the next day.”
- A family counsellor describes violence against women in the family

In January, Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson of Liberia became the first woman head of state in Africa, and Michele Bachelet the first elected woman President of Chile. Just a few months beore that Angela Merkel was chosen as the first female Federal Chancellor in Germany.

For two years running, in 2003 and 2004, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to women: Shirin Abadi, a lawyer from Iran, and Wangari Matthai, an environmental activist from Kenya. The New York Stock Exchange is now headed by a woman, as is the London Business School – as indeed, is Amnesty International!

Women around the world are breaking social and economic barriers. Yet despite these remarkable achievements, women and girls are still being subjected to violence at shocking levels.

Unlike the so-called “war on terror”, the “war on women and girls” is not on the global political agenda. It takes its toll in battlefields, bedrooms and backstreets — the greatest hidden human rights scandal of our times, made all the more scandalous by being present in every part of the world and in almost every aspect of life.

It starts before birth with sex-selective abortions, which has reached worrying proportions in countries like India. It is followed after birth by female infanticide and the sexual, emotional and physical abuse of girls — including through child prostitution, forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

In adulthood, violence takes the form of stalking, rape, intimate partner violence, sexual abuse and harassment by colleagues and relatives, “honour” crimes, and dowry and bride-price related abuses. At home or at work, women are not safe.

In some communities, a woman’s “honour” is seen as a commodity to be used to settle family debts or as a means of punishing a family. In Afghanistan, for example, rape and forced marriages are often used as a means of settling disputes between families or tribes.

Traditionally, human rights discourse has focused on how to protect citizens against the unreasonable and unlawful use of violence and coercion by the state, not on what the state can or should do to prevent violence by private actors. The private sphere, especially the family, was excluded — considered outside the reach of the state.

In fact, the kinds of confinement and regimes of terror that occur behind the closed doors of some homes can be as terrifying and destructive as any torture or ill-treatment in prisons run by repressive regimes.

Family violence affects every country in the world, including even the most developed. In Sweden, assaults against women have been increasing in recent years, with 22,400 reports filed in 2003. In Spain, the number of women killed by their partner or ex-partner has continued to increase since 2001. In France, a woman is killed by partner every four days. Ironically, it is often women in the richest and poorest strata of society find it most difficult to escape violence — the poor because they have no means to do it, and the rich because they have too much lose by it.

And yet, the family is widely perceived as a place of safety and a haven of privacy — and therefore accorded a privileged place in national and international law — despite the fact that for many women and girls the family can be an extremely dangerous place if state and society fail to protect them from violence at the hands of its members.

International declarations continue to nurture this paradox. On the one hand, they recognise violence against women in the family as a form of gender discrimination and human rights abuse. On the other hand, UN documents and treaties repeatedly call for the family to be strengthened as the basic unit of society.

The solution? For society and the state to create an environment in which women’s human rights are respected and upheld. For discrimination against women to be stamped out and equality of women to recognized. These are the ultimate answer to violence against women.

Sadly, there is instead, a backlash against women’s human rights, fed by conservative forces around the world. In Iraq important gains that women had made in the past decades have been rolled back by the government. In the US, foreign funding has been banned for birth control programmes, jeopardising women’s rights as well as work against the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Governments cannot escape their responsibility just because violence against women is often perpetrated by private actors — such as intimate partners — rather than state officials. The obligation of the state to protect women’s human rights does not disappear when a woman steps into her own home.

This is not to say that the government is responsible for every violent crime against a woman. What it means is that the state has an obligation to take all reasonable measures, through law, policy and practice, to ensure that a woman is not exposed to violence — and that she can obtain protection if she faces risk and redress if she suffers violence.

It means not using culture, custom, or religion as an excuse for turning a blind eye to human rights abuses against women or for failing to protect them. Four years ago this month, fourteen girls died and dozens more were injured in a fire at their school in Saudi Arabia. Religious police had preventing them escaping the burning building because they were not wearing headscarves and there were no male relatives to escort them.

It means holding the police and judiciary accountable for really tackling family violence, rather than viewing it as a private matter between a woman and her partner. Even in western countries many local authorities, police and magistrates often do not do enough to prevent and follow up cases of family violence.

It means recognizing the existence of marital rape and criminalizing it. Fewer than 30 countries had laws against marital rape by 2000. Over 70 countries still have no laws against domestic violence. Over 120 countries have no laws against sexual harassment, and over 50 countries have laws that actively discriminate against women.

It means providing women survivors of violence with adequate and appropriate shelter, support and other services.

Society too must take its responsibility and stop being complicit through its apathy, tolerance and silence. The taboos are still strong. The tendency by family, friends, neighbours and religious leaders is to tolerate, condone or turn one’s eyes away.

In the words of one woman survivor of violence, living in Spain, “My husband tried to kill me twice… My family still didn’t get it. They said things like: well deep down, he’s a good person, you need to learn to put up with it.”

In the face of such tolerance towards violence, women survivors of violence have shown astonishing courage in speaking out. Rania Al-Baz, a Saudi television presenter, shocked her country when she published photos of herself after having been beaten brutally by her husband in April 2004. This one woman did more to put the issue of domestic violence in the public sphere than anyone else.

Mukhtaran Mai has become a symbol of courage and hope for survivors of violence across the world. She filed a complaint and testified in court against six men who gang-raped her in Pakistan in 2002. A village council had ordered the men to carry out the rape as punishment after her brother was accused of having an affair with a woman from a higher-caste tribe.

In Mexico, the mothers of Ciudad Juarez have drawn attention to the killings of hundred of women and girls in their area and demanded justice in the face of official apathy and inaction.

The voices of women like these are sharp calls to shift state and society from apathy to awareness — to break social and cultural barriers and build the political will for concrete change.

Huge steps forward by women in the public sphere should not lull us into complacency about the struggle of women in live in safety and dignity. We must not allow the great space taken by the “war on terror” on the international political agenda to distract us from violence against women in our homes and communities everyday.

Violence against women is a threat to human security and its eradication must be given greater priority by all of us — whether as political leaders, police officers, judges, religious and community leaders, family, friend or neighbour.

– Irene Khan, Amnesty International Secretary-General

Public Document
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For more information please call Amnesty International’s press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566
Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web: http://www.amnesty.org

For latest human rights news view http://news.amnesty.org

Our next meeting is March 21 at 7:30pm in the Kahin Center, 660 Stewart Avenue.  If you’d like a map, please click here.

Ithaca, New York
March 2006

Señor Presidente Alvaro Uribe Vélez
Presidente de la República
Palacio Nariño, Carrera 8 No. 7-2
Bogotá, COLOMBIA

Your Excellency,

We are aware of the work accomplished by your Government in carrying on dialogue with Colombian paramilitary forces and persuading them to disarm. Nevertheless some of these forces continue threatening violence against the legitimate work of trade unions, falsely identifying unionists with guerrilla fighters. I refer particularly to the situation in Barrancabermeja, Department of Santander, where self-identified members of “Comando Regional del Magdalena Medio” threatened on March 2 to kill union members who were candidates in the congressional elections. Unfortunately such threats must be taken seriously, since Héctor Díaz Serrano, a member of the oil workers’ union Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), was murdered on the same day, allegedly by a member of the paramilitary group with close ties to the military. I call on the authorities to publicly denounce all such threats as well as previous threats and attacks against unionists and social activists. I call on them to ensure that all members of unions and civil society groups in Colombia are protected by the police and local authorities. In addition, I urge the government to take strict and effective measures to halt the use of false characterizations and threats of violence against citizens. Finally, I urge the government to declare that no member of any group has the right to intimidate or persecute any citizen, and to bring those responsible for such incidents to justice.

Thank you for your kind attention to my requests. I would be grateful for a statement from your office, which I see as the most authoritative source of information about the present situation of the paramilitary forces in your country.

Sincerely,

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Group #73, ITHACA. March 2006 NEWSLETTER.

MEETING: Tuesday, Mar. 21, 2006, 7:30 pm, Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave., Cornell West Campus. (Take driveway downhill to building with covered entranceway, in front door. Parking allowed evenings.) Info: 273-3009.

>>>> Can’t be at the whole meeting? Come early or late, sign even a single card!

AGENDA: ? Write letters on Urgent Action cases, cards, petitions: signatures are powerful!

• Plans for speaker at Ithaca High School the last week in March.

• The group’s website: update.

• Amnesty USA’s Annual General Meeting Apr. 28-30, Portland, OR; plans for attending, voting on resolutions.

• Reports and updates on campaigns.

NEXT MONTH’S MEETING: Tues. Apr. 18, 2006, 7:30, same place. Always the 3rd Tuesday. (Bring a fledgling member!)

Amnesty bases its work on the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 30 articles listing rights all people should have everywhere. An article for March: Art. 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

SAMPLE LETTER: Colombia. The country has been plagued by violence for decades: guerrillas struggle against the army while paramilitary groups aid the army (and it aids them). The government has in recent years sought to make paramilitaries disarm, but they continue threatening and killing citizens not involved in armed struggles. In one case this month they threatened candidates and killed a union member. Please send this letter or write your own to President Uribe at the address given (84¢ airmail). Extra effect: send a copy to Ambassador Andrés Pastrana Arango, Embassy of Colombia, 2118 Leroy Pl. NW, Washington DC 20008, Fax: 1 202 232 8643, Email: emwas@colombiaemb.org. Source: Urgent Action 56/06, 10 March 2006.

Anyone in Sherwood Boehlert’s district? We need phone calls to ask him to support a Congressional letter defending Turkmenistan prisoner of conscience Gurbandurdy Durdykuliev. Details: 273-3009 or come to meeting.

POSTAGE costs rise: cards 24¢, letters 39¢. Canada, Mexico cards 55¢, letters 63¢. Other countries: 75¢ – 84¢.

TV Show: Cable Channel 13. Weekly 30-minute program (premiere and 2 repeats). Tues. 9 PM, Wed. 11 PM, and Fri. 9 PM. http://www.pegasysaccess.org/; find “Amnesty International” on Channel 13 grid, or http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~jae/ai/index.html.

591 The Congo: three wars, and the prospects for peace, Part I 3/14, 3/15, 3/17

Herbert Weiss, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at City University and a Senior Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, discusses the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has killed an estimated 4 million people since 1996. Part of the 2006 Spring Seminar Series at the Institute for African Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

592 The Congo: three wars, and the prospects for peace, Part 2 3/21, 3/22, 3/24

Herbert Weiss continues his presentation at the 2006 Spring Seminar series.

593 Justice for our daughters, Ciudad Juárez 3/28, 3/29, 3/31

This video was produced by Rob Brouwer for AI-The Netherlands in 2004 for the Stop Violence Against Women Campaign.

594 (R#141 Forsaken Cries: The Story of Rwanda 4/4,5,7

What are the warning signs of a genocide? Amnesty International produced this video in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The video and a teaching manual are available at the Durland Alternatives Library.

595 (R#551) Effects of war on Sudanese Women 4/11,12,14

Julia Duany, Research Associate at Indiana University, discusses women’s peace building initiatives in war-ravaged Sudan.

A letter from the White House: “President Bush has repeatedly affirmed our country’s commitment to the worldwide elimination of torture….he has also directed our military personnel to treat all detainees in their custody humanely…The United States will continue to aggressively pursue intelligence from terrorists who are seeking to harm Americans, but will not compromise the rule of law or the values and principles that make our country strong.” Can we hold him to it? Amnesty criticizes all torture–it’s inhuman. It yields false information, not truth.

IN THE AREA: Cornell Amnesty meets Mon. afternoons; tables in Willard Straight Tues. lunchtime; writes letters Thu. 6:30-8:30 at Collegetown Bagels. Back on Mar. 27. Info kpm27@cornell.edu/ fml23@cornell.edu.

Ithaca College Amnesty group meets every other Thursday at 7 during the semester: contact Evan Engel, president, 375-2759 eengel1@ithaca.edu. It is sponsoring an exhibit “Refugees Even After Death: A Quest for Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation” by Jonathan Moller (www.jonathanmoller.org). Photographs testify to the Guatemalan massacres under military regimes in 1981-82. Opening Thu. Mar. 15, Handwerker Gallery; workshop by Moller on activism and art March 30th at 12:15 pm, Handwerker; a talk by the artist/activist March 29th 7pm in Textor Hall 102. Info: Naomi Neustadt nneusta1@ithaca.edu 781-771-0124.

At Cornell: “Okinawa Soul”: three decades of photographs by Ishikawa Mao, focusing on life in Okinawa in the shadow of US and Japanese rule and military presence. Mar. 13-24, Hartell Gallery, Sibley Hall. Mon-Fri 9 to 5.

Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival at Ithaca College Thu. Mar. 30 to Thu. Apr. 6: see newspapers and http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff/calendar.html. Many films touch human rights, women’s rights, war damage. Comments at showings by Ithaca College faculty. Let’s specially note some weekend showings downtown: S21, the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine [Fall Creek, Sat. Apr. 1, 2:15 p.m. and 9:35 p.m.] Notre musique (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 2004) meditation on war largely set at a literary conference in Sarajevo; it draws heavily from the Bosnian war, but also from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the brutal treatment of Native Americans, and the legacy of the Nazis. [Fall Creek, Fri. Mar. 31, 9:35 p.m.] Mooladé (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal, 2004). The filmmaker takes on the explosive issue of female circumcision, a practice still extant in Africa and condemned by Amnesty [Cinemapolis, Sat. Apr. 1, 2:15 p.m. and 4:35 p.m.] The Legacy of Jedwabne (Slawomir Grunberg, United States/Poland, 2005; 72 min.). The Ithaca filmmaker tells the story of a 1941 pogrom in Jedwabne, Poland, and explores the implications of past history for present identity. [Cinemapolis, Sun. Apr. 2, 2:15 p.m.]

March 8, International Women’s Day: Cornell’s Women’s Resource Center and International Students & Scholars Office marked the day with awards, including one to our own Wies van Leuken, Coordinator 1997-2005 and TV producer ever since 1994. Several members attended.

OUT IN THE WORLD: the UN General Assembly will have a new Human Rights Council. Amnesty USA hopes it will be better at calling countries to account than the previous Commission on Human Rights. It was voted into existence March 15, 170 to 4 (3 abstentions). Sadly, the US was one of the 4 against. • See the site http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/ for actions to: protect seekers of asylum; free a woman sentenced to life for demonstrating in Myanmar; oppose U.S. “renditions” of detainees to other countries.

Recently on http://news.amnesty.org/: Feb. 27, Chilean President-elect Michelle Bachelet presented Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience award to the Irish band U2. Brazil: police use armored cars to drive into slums and shoot machine-guns in all directions. Bahamas: no more mandatory death sentence! Belarus: KGB (it’s still called that) and police imprison and beat opposition presidential candidates, close youth organizations.

Our group’s Web site (kindness of webmaster Jesse Ernst): http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~jae/ai/index.html. Keep the Newsletter coming: renew subscriptions! $5/year to “AI Group #73, Ithaca,” c/o W. Browne, 206 Eddy St., Ithaca NY 14850, 273-3009. Rather get it by e-mail? Ask ewb2@cornell.edu. Info: co-coordinators Charlotte Acharya 227-3471 cba9@cornell.edu; Jackie Swift, swiftlyme@yahoo.com

Amnesty International group 73
206 Eddy St.
Ithaca, NY 14850