Stop the Violence Against Women!!

Last week ActionAid International’s Technical Advisor on Women’s Rights, Ms Ennie Chipembere, held a one day workshop in Sydney for all ActionAiders in Australia on Women’s Rights.

Much of Ennie’s focus was on Violence Against Women as this is a major priority for ActionAid internationally and our experience with protection and conflict work. In many ways this is the main game for us at ActionAid Australia and I thought I’d dig into the issue a little more and finish with how Australia can lead in this critical area.

Violence against women and girls is one of the starkest collective failures of the international community in the 21st century. Violence affects one in three women globally and is one of the most widespread abuses of human rights worldwide in times of both conflict and peace. It is a leading cause of death and disability among women of all ages. Women face violence and the threat of violence at every stage of their lives.

As well as representing a gross violation of human rights in its own right, violence against women also presents a fundamental barrier to eradicating poverty and building peace. Violence against women impoverishes individual women, as well as their families, communities and countries. It drains public resources, undermines human capital, and lowers economic productivity. Even the most conservative estimates measure national costs of violence against women and girls in the billions of dollars

Violence against women remains a persistent problem because of women’s unequal status in society. Indeed, violence against women and girls is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality. Violence against women is a means of social control that maintains unequal power relations between women and men and reinforces women’s subordinate status.

Violence against women is also an abuse of the power imbalance between women and men. Women are at risk of violence because they do not have enough power in society to protect themselves from more powerful men or to access justice.

Violence against women and girls also blocks progress across the major development agendas: Crucially, violence against women undermines women’s potential and ability to effect change in the world. Half the world’s population is unable to bring their skills fully to bear on the challenges of the day because they are fighting for their safety. A constant threat to their lives and well-being, violence against women robs women of choices and control over their own bodies, sexuality and lives. It gravely affects their chances of survival and their ability to lift themselves out of poverty.

It stops them from securing a decent education, entering the employed workforce, leaving an abusive partner and participating in public life. Allowing violence against women to continue unabated sends the message that we do not value women or their lives. It also means that progress towards development goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals, is destined to fail.

As Australia has a growing and recognised role in international development, the Government of Australia is in a unique position to influence others and lead a new approach to change. The best way to do this is for Australia to address violence against women and girls coherently as a strategic priority in all of its international work, including its foreign policy. The steps the government could take include:

1. Make ending violence against women internationally a foreign policy priority.

2. Appoint a Minister on violence against women and girls whose brief covers The Australian Agency for International Development, the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Defence.

3. Enhance infrastructure within government to monitor and enforce Australia’s international obligations on violence against women.

4. Champion attention to violence against women and girls within the international development agenda, including the need for more and better disaggregated data, through advocacy with multilateral agencies and international frameworks including the Millennium Development Goals and the post-MDG framework, and by supporting the UN Secretary General’s campaign on violence against women and the full funding of the new UN Gender Entity.

5. Strengthen the work of AusAID on violence against women by recognising it as a core development issue, linking it to poverty, economic growth, education, health and conflict; developing a coherent and adequately funded strategy to address the issue above and beyond the current focus on violence against women and girls in conflict; and supporting the women’s organisations and networks that provide life saving and advocacy services for women survivors of violence.