Rejecting cultural' justifications for violence agains

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Rejecting cultural justifications for violence
against womenStrategies for mobilising state,
society and the international community

• A Consultation Paper
• by the
• Research Programme Consortium on Womens
  Empowerment in Muslim Contexts Gender, Poverty
  and Democratisation from the Inside Out (WEMC)

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Contents

• Responses of the international community
• Structural opportunities and challenges
• Strategies for countering cultural excuses for
  violence against women
• Full paper available at lthttp//www.wemc.com.hkgt

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Part 1 Responses of the international community
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UN responses to violence against women as a
global problem

• 1993 UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the
  Declaration on the Elimination of Violence
  against Women
• 1999 25 November designated as International Day
  for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
• 2000 UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325
  on women and peace and security
• 30 January 2007 UN General Assembly adopted
  Resolution A/RES/61/143 Intensification of
  efforts to eliminate all forms of violence
  against women based on the Secretary-Generals
  Report (July 2006) In-depth study on all forms
  of violence against women

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General Assembly Resolution A/RES/61/143
strategic opportunity for womens rights advocates

• Call for annual reporting on scope, prevalence
  and incidence of violence against women
• Based on systematic data collection and analysis
• A set of indicators on violence to be developed
• Secretary-General to establish a coordinated
  database containing data provided by States
• Secretary-General to submit an annual report to
  the General Assembly on the implementation of the
  Resolution first report in 2008
• Purpose of this Consultation Paper seek inputs
  for feeding into Secretary-Generals Report (2008)

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Why does violence against women and girls persist
in every country?

• Cultural excuses justify and perpetuate
  violence against women and girls
• Therefore, crucial to reject such cultural
  excuses
• UN General Assemblys Resolution A/RES/61/143
  stresses that States should strongly condemn
  violence against women and refrain from invoking
  any custom, tradition or religious consideration
  to avoid their obligations with respect to its
  elimination.
• However, Secretary-Generals 2006 Report
  (paragraph 81) Cultural justifications for
  restricting womens human rights have been
  asserted by some States and by social groups
  within many countries claiming to defend cultural
  tradition.
• Necessary to identify and monitor such States

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Non-State actors

• Theres a lot of law writing, standard setting,
  programmes being planned, but the biggest
  problemis that people are using culture and
  religion to deny womens rights
• (Radhika Coomaraswamy, former Special Rapporteur
  on Violence Against Women, 2005)
• Non-State actors are utilising culture to
  justify and excuse acts of discrimination and
  violence against women, thus undermining the
  compliance of States with their international
  human rights obligations
• (Yakin Ertürk, current Special Rapporteur on
  Violence Against Women, 2006, 2007)

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States should not condone violence against women
in any form, done by anyone

• General Assemblys Resolution A/RES/61/143
  strongly condemns all acts of violence against
  women and girls, whether these acts are
  perpetrated by the State, by private persons or
  by non-State actors.
• When the State fails to hold the perpetrators
  accountable, impunity not only intensifies the
  subordination and powerlessness of the targets of
  violence, but also sends a message to society
  that male violence against women is both
  acceptable and inevitable. As a result, patterns
  of violent behaviour are normalised
  (Secretary-Generals Report 2006, para. 76)
• How are States to be held accountable?
• The Resolution seeks (i) annual reporting, (ii)
  specific indicators e.g.
• States efforts to change or abolish all
  discriminatory laws, policies practices,
• States due diligence,
• States prosecution and punishment of all
  perpetrators of violence against women.

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Part 2 Structural opportunities and challenges
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Structural opportunities foundations for
international consensus on eliminating violence
against women

• Human rights instruments
• Charter of the United Nations,
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
  Discrimination against Women, etc.
• Declarations on womens rights
• Declaration on the Elimination of Violence
  against Women
• Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
• the outcome of the General Assemblys 23rd
  special session on Women 2000 gender equality,
  development and peace for the twenty-first
  century,
• the declaration adopted at the 49th session of
  the Commission on the Status of Women
• International commitments made at the
• World Conference on Human Rights,
• International Conference on Population and
  Development,
• World Summit for Social Development
• World Conference against Racism, Racial
  Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related
  Intolerance
• United Nations Millennium Declaration
• 2005 World Summit

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Structural challenges

• Despite efforts, violence against women persists.
  
• Why? Structural and material causes for its
  perpetuation.
• One major cause legitimation of the violence
  through the use of culture
• Who is using culture to legitimise violence
  against women?
• Patriarchal interests
• Nationalist and communal interests
• Colonizing interests
• Cultural relativist interests
• Womens rights activists have to deal with all
  these interests at the same time very complex
  challenge

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Patriarchal interests

• Current resurgence of patriarchal family
  coincides with the neo-liberal discourse of
  privatisation.
• But the patriarchal familys cultural
  restoration disguises its important role in
  fulfilling social needs left unattended by the
  increasing privatisation of public services.
• Re-domestication of women and the use of violence
  for this part of the process of devolving state
  responsibilities to the family.
• Use of culture to justify violence means of
  coercing women into playing imposed gender roles
  in the family hierarchy
• Compliance sometimes reduces acute forms of
  violence, but leaves untouched chronic forms of
  systemic violence severe exploitation within the
  family, especially lack of access to and control
  over economic resources (Secretary-Generals
  Report 2006, para. 87)

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Nationalist and communal interests (1)

• Nationalist claims to sovereign non-interference
  demarcate spatial and notional zones of
  collective autonomy, supposedly off-limits to the
  machinations of the metropolitan North
• But what is covered by the nationalist cloak may
  either promote or suppress the rights of
  individual citizens, including women citizens.
• Example some States have invoked cultural
  justifications for restricting womens human
  rights (Secretary-Generals Report para. 81)
• Use of cultural justifications for exemption
  from the human rights framework not limited to
  those seeking to restrict womens rights.
• Example in the 1990s, Asian values was
  invented as a concept by the governments of
  Singapore and Malaysia, to counter human rights
  criticisms about their laws on detention without
  trial and capital punishment.

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Nationalist and communal interests (2)

• Some States invoke their sovereign right to
  non-interference only over issues of human rights
  and womens rights, but quietly allow external
  interference over political and economic issues,
  e.g. governance structures, national policies and
  budgets, natural resources, military and
  armaments, infrastructural developments, etc.
• Why this selectivity? Is this a decoy function
  i.e. by strongly asserting the sovereign right to
  non-interference over issues of human rights and
  womens rights, public attention would be drawn
  away from those political and economic issues
  where external interference is being quietly
  accepted?
• Male leaders may willingly accept technology
  that massively affects culture, but resist
  changes in womens status, reflect a tendency
  to treat women as the repositories of cultural
  identity (Secretary-Generals Report, para. 80)
• Why this selectivity? Is it because technology
  can boost male power, but changes in womens
  status would challenge male power?
• Convergence between patriarchal interests and
  national-communal interests

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Nationalist and communal interests (3)

• Non-State actors may also use principle of
  sovereign non-interference
• Within the state, if they do not agree with State
  policies seek exemption from the laws of the
  land
• Across borders e.g. fundamentalists operating
  outside state structures
• In all cases where closed constituencies are
  formed women tend to be treated as symbols of
  national or communal identity
• Upholding honour and purity
• Marking and policing social and cultural
  boundaries
• Reproducing the boundaries of ethnic/national
  groups
• As boundary markers, women and girls are
  subjected to special rules and regulations to
  ensure compliance with this imposed burden of
  representation.
• Non-compliance is punished by violence.

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Colonising interests (1)

• A persisting colonial mind-set stereotypes the
  post-colonised south as Oriental, implying
  alien barbarism in need of civilising.
• Women in the post-colonised South are seen as
  helpless and choiceless victims of the misogyny
  inherent in their supposedly pre-modern,
  non-secular, barbarian cultures that are seen
  as needing to be civilised and modernised.
• This mind-set denies women in the global South
  their histories of resistance to patriarchy, and
  overlooks indigenous alternatives that are
  gender-equitable.
• Womens rights advocates have to struggle not
  only against local patriarchies, but also against
  colonising paternalism.
• This separation between the modern and the
  backward, the civilized and those needing
  civilizing is encoded into international law,
  specifically international human rights law
• Example the UN aims to eliminate harmful
  traditional practices, ranking these as
  significantly worse than other forms of gender
  based violence.
• This gives the impression that the metropolitan
  centres of the West contain no traditions or
  culture harmful to women, and that the violence
  which exists there is idiosyncratic and
  individualised, not culturally condoned.

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Colonising interests (2)

• Result a mutually reinforcing feedback
  relationship between colonising interests on the
  one hand, and the other hand, national and
  communal interests as a reaction to the former.
• Nationalist and communal interests, plus
  associated patriarchal interests, are being
  justified by the existence of an interventionist
  and polarising colonial mind-set.
• Detrimental to womens rights in global South

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Cultural relativist interests

• Cultural relativist interests accept the
  presentation of culture by dominant groups
  claiming ownership over a particular culture, on
  grounds of political correctness.
• Witting or unwitting collusion with nationalist
  and communal interests in disenfranchising the
  right of dissenting members to exit or disengage
  from the impositions of the group.
• While nationalist and communal interests are set
  in opposition to colonising interests, they are
  supported by cultural relativist interests.
• The discourse of cultural relativism asserts the
  right to difference.
• But who or what has this right to difference? All
  too often, this right is seen as belonging to the
  group, rather than its supposed members.
• So the rights of women who are claimed as members
  of the group tend to be ignored by cultural
  relativists.
• Cultural justifications for violence against
  women tend to be accepted by cultural
  relativists. This seriously threatens womens
  rights, when cultural relativist positions become
  policies, laws or legal decisions.
• Cultural relativist arguments have been advanced
  in national contexts and in international debates
  when laws and practices that curtail womens
  human rights have been challenged
  (Secretary-Generals Report para. 81)

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Part 3 Strategies for countering cultural
excuses for violence against women
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Six types of strategies

• Strengthening gender-equitable interpretations
  and womens equal rights to interpret culture
• Mobilising women to resist the use of
  culturally justified violence as a systemic
  means of intimidation
• De-legitimising those who set themselves up as
  the source of moral authority
• Exposing media manipulations
• Re-affirming womens rights as human rights
• Building alliances across cultures, societies,
  nations

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Strategy 1 Strengthening gender-equitable
interpretations and womens equal rights to
interpret culture (A)

• While some cultural norms and practices empower
  women and promote womens human rights, customs,
  traditions and religious values are also often
  used to justify violence against women.. Given
  the fluidity of culture, womens agency in
  challenging oppressive cultural norms and
  articulating cultural values that respect their
  human rights is of central importance. Efforts to
  address the impact of culture on violence should
  therefore take direction from the women who are
  seeking to ensure their rights within the
  cultural communities concerned
  (Secretary-Generals Report, para. 78, 85)
• Those who use culture to excuse violence
  against women always claim that their usage the
  only true interpretation.
• They silence alternatives that challenge their
  interpretation and therefore their power.
• While women are also actors in constituting
  culture (Secretary-Generals Report, para. 80),
  their agency tends to be exercised under highly
  contested, sometimes oppressive, conditions.
• Hearing womens voices entails the need to ensure
  that they can speak loudly and freely,
  individually and collectively.

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Strategy 1 Strengthening gender-equitable
interpretations and womens equal rights to
interpret culture (B)

• Strategically important to emphasise womens
  equal ownership of their culture, not just accept
  their inferior status in male-defined,
  male-dominated constructions of culture
• Crucial step without this step, one is only
  tactically seeking short-term concessions from a
  male-dominated power structure, without a
  long-term strategy of altering that power
  structure.
• Example mobilisation of Muslim religious
  scholars (ulama) in stopping cultural practices
  that violate women, e.g. female genital
  mutilation. While this may help as a short-term
  tactic, in the long term, does this not maintain
  and even reinforce the ulamas position of
  authority in defining cultural norms?
• A fine distinction exists between the
  strengthening of relatively more gender-equitable
  alternatives and the strengthening of womens
  equal ownership of culture.
• Do the relatively more gender-equitable
  alternatives in question recognise womens
  freedom from violence as a right, not just as a
  privilege? Do they acknowledge womens equal
  ownership of their culture?
• Two-strategy moving from gender-equitable
  alternatives to womens equal ownership of culture

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Strategy 1 Strengthening gender-equitable
interpretations and womens equal rights to
interpret culture (C)

• Ultimately, women need to reclaim their rights of
  citizenship to define not only culture, but also
  society and nation.
• A long-term but necessary struggle as long as
  women are forced into a position of being passive
  digits manipulated in realities imposed by men,
  they will continue to be vulnerable to violence
  inflicted on them.
• But some women and allies of women may not be
  ready to view violence against women in the
  larger context of citizenship, preferring to
  contain the issue within the bounds of social
  dysfunctionality e.g. to be dealt with through
  counselling and shelters. But these are
  short-term responses dealing only with the
  symptoms of patriarchal power.
• The Secretary-Generals Report (para.)
  acknowledges patriarchy as the root cause of
  violence against women The pervasiveness of
  violence against women across the boundaries of
  nation, culture, race, class and religion points
  to its roots in patriarchy the systemic
  domination of women by men.
• In the long run, patriarchy itself, as a system
  of male domination, has to be eradicated if
  violence against women is to be eradicated.

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Strategy 2 Mobilising women to resist the use of
culturally justified violence as a systemic
means of intimidation

• This strategy seeks to mobilise women who are not
  directly victimised by violence, so that they
  understand that violence against women is not
  just a problem of the victims, but a problem of
  all women.
• The strategy needs to expose how violence against
  some women is a means of intimidating all women
  collectively, frightening them into toeing the
  line,
• Mobilisation of women collectively is crucial,
  because we need discredit false accusations that
  the women who suffered the violence were
  justifiably punished only because they are
  so-called bad women. The implication of such
  accusations is that so-called good women are
  safe from violence.
• The strategy needs to show how the
  differentiation between bad and good women is
  constructed by the patriarchal system in order to
  control women.
• Purpose of the strategy spur more women to
  overcome their fear and to cross the artificially
  imposed line.
• But one potential consequence expose these women
  to increased risk and vulnerability, in the
  absence of adequate support systems.
• Systematic thought and planning needed to lessen
  the personal costs borne by women who are
  emboldened to cross or even erase the line.

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Strategy 3 De-legitimising those who set
themselves up as the source of moral authority

• This strategy exposes vested interests and the
  collusion of different interests e.g.
  cultural, military, political, patriarchal.
• Research and documentation needed to expose the
  self-serving interests of non-State actors, e.g.
  local and patriarchal elites seeking political
  control over state resources, and how these
  interests are using culture (including
  religion) to legitimise themselves.
• Limitation of this strategy while it
  de-stabilises the basis of authority of those who
  are in power, it may simply help to open the way
  for new authority figures who are no less
  patriarchal and exploitative.

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Strategy 4 Exposing media manipulations

• This strategy makes visible un-reported and
  under-reported realities that support womens
  rights.
• One constraint reportage of realities and voices
  that support womens rights may be relegated to
  alternative media, rather than mainstream media,
  given the commoditisation of news as information
  that sells.

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Strategy 5 Re-affirming womens rights as human
rights (A)

• Strength of this strategy unwavering adherence
  to the universal human rights framework and to
  international conventions agreed upon by member
  States of the United Nations
• The strategy embodied in the General Assemblys
  Resolution A/RES/61/143, which urges States
• To consider ratifying or acceding to all human
  rights treaties, limit the extent of any
  reservations that they lodge and regularly review
  such reservations with a view to withdrawing
  them
• To review and, where appropriate, revise, amend
  or abolish all laws, regulations, policies,
  practices and customs that discriminate against
  women or have a discriminatory impact on women
  in compliance with international human rights
  obligations

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Strategy 5 Re-affirming womens rights as human
rights (B)

• One constraint this strategy may be labelled by
  cultural gatekeepers as being externally
  derived and driven by the metropolitan Norths
  agenda of global domination.
• Such accusations deny the universality of the
  human rights framework, instead particularising
  it as a product solely of the metropolitan North.
  
• These accusations are bolstered by cultural
  relativists, who collude in these attempts of
  States and non-State actors to exempt themselves
  from complying with the universal human rights
  framework.

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Strategy 5 Re-affirming womens rights as human
rights (C)

• Strategically necessary to re-discover peoples
  awareness of concepts of justice and rights from
  within their own cultures
• Women need to reclaim their culturally legitimate
  right to have rights.
• Particularly important at micro and meso levels
  local communities relative lack of exposure to
  international human rights discourse can be seen
  not as a deficiency, but as an opportunity to
  advance indigenous concepts of justice and rights
  from within these communities
• At the same time, there should be bridging of
  indigenous concepts of justice and rights with
  the international human rights discourse, to
  ensure that at the end of the day, womens rights
  are being asserted within a universal framework
  of rights.

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Strategy 5 Re-affirming womens rights as human
rights (D)

• Tension between cultural relativism and the
  recognition of womens human rights, including
  the right to be free from violence, has been
  intensified as a result of the current heightened
  attention to State security issues. The resort to
  cultural relativism has been made worse by the
  policies adopted since 11 September 2001 by many
  groups and societies that feel threatened and
  under siege. This tension poses a notable
  challenge in ensuring that violence against women
  is kept firmly on the international and national
  agendas with the priority it requires
  (Secretary-Generals Report para. 82)
• Attempts to silence women at multiple levels
• Micro individual women are being silenced,
  including victims of violence
• Meso womens rights advocates are being
  silenced, individually and collectively.
• Macro even multilateral agencies working for
  womens rights are being silenced by pressures
  from certain States that they should not focus on
  violence against women as a donor-driven issue, ,
  which does not have local relevance.
• Womens assertion of their rights, for themselves
  or others, is being suppressed by threats or acts
  of violence, ostracism and accusations of
  betrayal of family, community and nation.
• Important to ensure that women womens rights
  advocates are not silenced.

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Strategy 5 Re-affirming womens rights as human
rights (E)

• Do soft approaches work? Soft approaches
  overlook abuses of womens rights by State
  agents, but continue to support or invest
  financially in such States, thereby rewarding
  criminal and negligent behaviour, while failing
  to advance womens rights.
• Result encouragement of impunity for violence
  against women which compounds the effects of
  such violence as a mechanism of control
  (Secretary-Generals Report, para. 76)
• Overseas development assistance should be tied to
  the effective implementation of womens rights
  programmes, especially those on gender-based
  violence.
• Womens rights advocates and other civil society
  groups need to be actively engaged in the annual
  reporting on the scope, prevalence and incidence
  of violence against women, based on a set of
  indicators, as recommended by the General
  Assemblys Resolution A/RES/61/143.
• Example an annual list of worst offenders,
  targeting instances of State-sanctioned violence
  against women, can be compiled for close
  monitoring, public censure and appropriate
  responses by the international community.
  Information should include the number of women
  who have suffered violence, the nature of the
  crimes, and State responses to these crimes, e.g.
  investigations, charges, arrests, follow-up legal
  processes, court hearings, punishments, and
  grounds accepted for mitigation.

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Strategy 6 Building alliances across cultures,
societies, nations

• Absolutely vital to build alliances across
  cultures, societies and nations based on shared
  recognition that the root cause of violence
  against women is patriarchy so violence against
  women is not peculiar only to some cultural
  guises of patriarchy.
• Violence against women is not confined to a
  specific culture, region or country, or to
  particular groups of women within a society
  (Secretary-Generals Report, para. 61)
• This point highlighted as a headline by the UN
  Department of Public Information, News and Media,
  when the Report was presented to the General
  Assemblys Third Committee.
• Systematic development of alliances and
  coalitions across cultures, societies and nations
  must form an integral part of the implementation
  of the General Assemblys Resolution
  A/RES/61/1437 and therefore supported by States
  and the international community.
• This will mobilise globally a critical mass of
  societal concern that will truly intensify
  efforts to eliminate all forms of violence
  against women and ultimately enable women to
  enjoy their non-negotiable right to live lives
  free of violence.