Violence Against Women (Focus on India)

By: Mita Ramani

In countries around the world, millions of women and girls are subject to violence in various forms ranging from being forced into sex, killed in the name of honor, or beaten by an intimate partner. The direct economic costs of violence against women are enormous in terms of lost working time, lost earnings, and medical expenditure. The indirect costs of limiting the active role that women and girls can take in the development of their community are unquantifiable. According to data gathered by the UNiTE UN Women Campaign to End Violence Against Women, approximately 7 in 10 women in the world have experienced physical and or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime. That translates into about 70% of women who have been abused. Any percent of women being abused is wrong. This is why there is a fight to end violence against women. 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not a crime. This is a blatant failure for women all around the world. For women to not only be abused but then for the perpetrators of such attacks to have zero consequences is a true failure. From female soldiers who are raped by their own troops to the civilian women and girls who are raped and murdered as weapons of war to returning soldiers who come home only to abuse the women of the family, armed conflicts do not help the situation with women. As the world has only seen a massive escalation of armed conflicts in the last years there is an ever greater demand to step up protection for women and make the campaign to end violence against women a priority in the global sphere.

Violence against women used to be a very taboo subject to talk about or portray in the media. Cases were never publicized in the same way twenty years ago as they are now. A perfect example of this is the 2012 Delhi Gang Rape. This brutal rape and fatal assault of a young woman in Delhi India was widely publicized in both India and abroad. The massive media coverage allowed for national and international outrage, which was able to produce justice for the victim, and really engaged communities in talking about how to combat violence against women. But there are many faults that are still apparent in the media and reporting of violence against women. Rape and violence against women are among the most under-reported crimes worldwide because of the social stigma attached to the nature of the crime. It is important to note that in reality all statistics that are reported about violence against women are not as accurate as they may seem. All statistics are theoretically higher than reported for primarily two reasons.

The first reason is that the year is currently 2015. Though this may seem like a very obvious fact, it is crucial to remember when looking at statistics because it has been years since these statistics were reported. As the number of victims of violence increases every year, the statistics in reality are much higher today than they were for example in 2010, 2005 or 2000. By looking at a case study of India, this fact is quite apparent. In India, there has been a sharp increase in the number of reported cases of rape, molestation, and physical abuses even just in the past 24 months. These cases have not been added to official statistics therefore this chunk of data is completely missing.

The second reason is the fear factor. Women in many countries are afraid of speaking out about whatever abuse they may have suffered because they fear they will be shunned or thrown out from their families. Many women fear being blamed for being a victim of violence. This stops many women from coming forward and telling their stories. For example in many African nations such as Uganda there is a highly negative stigma against any woman who comes forward to accuse an attacker. Communities refuse to accept women who have been sexually violated on the basis that is their own fault for bringing such a predicament upon themselves. If every woman who has suffered abuse came forward and was reported in official statistics- all the numbers would be higher.

Throughout history there have been a variety of documents produced from the international community in order to protect women from violence. Despite being produced by the international community, the effects of these documents have not been as widespread as many would have hoped. the two main documents to focus on are The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination and the Beijing Platform for Action from the Beijing+20 Conference.

The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women also known as CEDAW was adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly. It is seen as an international bill of rights for women that should be universally implemented. Sadly that goal is extremely idealistic and the document has not played out exactly as imagined. There have been 189 countries that have signed and ratified CEDAW, which in of itself was seen as a great victory for women because it shows the determination of countries to improve the international status of women. Within those 189 ratifications there have been a large amount of restrictions and limitations that various individual states have placed on the document. Many countries have rejected clause and sections of CEDAW, most notably with Article 29 of the text. Article 29 is controversial due to how it discusses how conflicts regarding CEDAW must be addressed but many nations believe that such conflicts should be settled individually between nations and not involve the international community or CEDAW. Along with Article 29, there have been a host of other reservations that nations have used to challenge sections of CEDAW. One of the most shocking faults of CEDAW is that it has not been ratified by the global superpower, The United States of America. this has been quite a disappointment to the international community and has led to many questioning the commitment of the United States when it comes to achieving gender equality. Despite these various and sometimes widespread challenges, CEDAW has been seen as a revolutionary document in setting international standards for women and motivating countries to do better through seeing the examples of other countries.

CEDAW has become powerful as a beacon to fight against violence against women because it has many claims that enforce the right of women to be protected and secure. It also calls for a new international order in which crimes against women are to be punished with equality and justice. This ties into the campaign for ending violence against women because in order for the amount of attacks against women to reduce, perpetrators must be afraid of prosecution by the law. Women should not be afraid and CEDAW is trying to achieve this. Such a document in 1979 must have been groundbreaking. There have been challenges in fully implementing CEDAW but even just a nation ratifying CEDAW and its attempts to achieve the set goals has added to bettering the situation of women, politically, economically, and socially-directly tying into protecting women against violence. CEDAW was the document that really kicked off the campaign to end violence against women.

The Beijing Platform for Action also known as BPfA+20 is a recent and direct document that was composed by the international community in a conference in Beijing in order to combat gender inequality. It was written 20 years after the first Beijing Declaration, which was another document that affirmed and protected the rights of women. BPfA+20 also gave the international community to assess the progress that women have made in the last 20 years from the first document. BPfA+20 differs from CEDAW in that it does not hold a mandate in the same way. CEDAW has more power and weight in the international community because it is a set of governance requirements whereas BPfA+20 is plans and strategies to advance women in society. Though BPfA+20 is less enforceable it is more detailed and idealistic in terms of women’s advancement socially, politically and economically. It is divided into sections for each aspect of women’s equality that need to be addressed.

The fourth chapter of BPfA+20 is titled “Violence Against Women.” It begins by defining and explaining what constitutes violence against women. It explains how certain a groups of women such as minority groups, immigrants, or women in war zones may be more prone to experiencing violence. Section 8 of the chapter describes how violence against manifested from historically unequal power relations between men and women. The majority of the violence against women section of BPfA+20 is a set of integrated measures that should be taken to prevent and eliminate violence against women by individual national governments. The actions describe range from enacting harsher penal codes and laws against those who have subjected women to violence to providing aid and education to affected females. These measures are all very idealistic and some may say unattainable but they give countries concrete plans and goals to work towards. BPfA+20 has been instrumental in propelling nations and communities forward to combat violence against women.

India in the past years has become a country of focus when it comes to violence against women due to the 2012 Delhi Gang Rape Case [mentioned above] and the subsequent Nirbhaya Effect. The Nirbhaya Effect was one of the greatest outcomes of the publicized rape case. As Indian criminal law does not allow the release of the name of a woman who is involved in a rape case, the media began calling the victim by the name of “Nirbhaya” which means fearless until her name was released to the public by the court system. This name spread like wildfire through the youth of India primarily by means of social media. It started the what is known as the Nirbhaya Effect where more and more women are willing to come forward and report attacks and name their attackers. In Indian culture where such behavior has been ostracized for years, this phenomena is a great improvement to the fight to end violence against women.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau in 2013 the national capital of New Delhi was reported to have the highest crime rate against women. The cities with a large, poorly registered migrant population like Delhi tend to be more vulnerable to crimes against women. Specifically, crimes against women have gone up compared to total crimes committed during a five-year period by 32% but this also may be due to the Nirbhaya Effect as discussed earlier. The state of Madhya Pradesh, in the heartland of India, has reported the highest number of rape cases and West Bengal in the east reported the highest rate of trafficking of young women. The northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous, reported the highest number of kidnappings and abduction cases and dowry deaths. These reports leave India with the reputation that it holds of being one of the worst country for the situation of women. The 2013 data shows 70 percent of crimes against women were reported from 53 mega cities with Delhi accounting for 21.4 percent, the highest. It is followed by the financial capital of Mumbai/Bombay at 5.5% and Bangalore, which is known as India’s Silicon Valley at 4.9 percent. India has large expanses of rural land as well as highly developed industrial cities. The rural figures are generally under-reported because a lack of direct infrastructure and institutionalization of governments.

“Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex.”-Mahatma Gandhi