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Article 4
States should condemn violence against women and should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination. States should pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating violence against women and, to this end, should:
( o ) Recognize the important role of the women’s movement and non-governmental organizations world wide in raising awareness and alleviating the problem of violence against women;
( p ) Facilitate and enhance the work of the women’s movement and non-governmental organizations and cooperate with them at local, national and regional levels;
( q ) Encourage intergovernmental regional organizations of which they are members to include the elimination of violence against women in their programmes, as appropriate.
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women or the Declaration deals with the basic bodily integrity issue of violence, in particular Violence Against Women or VAW, and the context with women having the fundamental right to bodily autonomy and integrity.
However, the grim reality – and it’s rather unfortunate, ubiquitous, and seeps into and affects other areas of the operations of a society – comes in the physical, psychological, and sexual violence against women, where these can impact the long-term livelihood of women and girls.
I have spoken to women in areas of the world where female genital mutilation (FGM) was done by to them by family members as a matter of traditional religion and culture; those who may undergo similar consequences in their lives because of remaining single and the family sincerely believing more FGM will bring marriage and family for their daughter.
From their point of view, they follow tradition, do Allah’s will, and increase the potential fortunes of the family by keeping the daughter ‘pure.’ In this sense, we can see the development of cultures carried over generations to impose trauma and suffering on women and girls.
Hearing the stories, it breaks your heart. Women and girls are given little in the way of a life, especially comparatively, and then having even more born into them – the intimate areas of their bodies – stripped from them in non-hygienic conditions without proper medical tools – without consent and/or below the age of consent.
The women’s movement, or the women’s rights movements as a collective international force, is recognized within the Declaration as an important force for the increased knowledge and elimination of VAW in different countries and domains around the world.
Not only the movements focused on the associated networks of NGOs or non-governmental organizations acting for the benefit of women and girls through the advocacy and implementation of women’s rights as stipulate in documents including the Declaration here; Article 4(p) continues a similar vein with the emphasis for further easing of the work of the women’s rights movements and the improvement of the already effective measures at all relevant and easily identifiable levels – “local, national and regional.”
Both working in coordination with one another provide a basis for the improvement of the livelihoods of women around the world and their young, including girls, through the implementation of women’s rights and, in this case, children’s rights too, for the reduction in and complete elimination of VAW.
Not a small task for a small set of implications from an actual small set of statements, the fundamental premises are such as that women and girls deserve the equal rights with the men and boys in their lives in some of the most important areas of living a healthy and long life, i.e., the ability to live free and comfortably away from VAW – often, mind you-me, done by the hands of men against women and girls from rape to psychological abuse including, for example, threatening to leave in a relationship continuously, degrading comments, or the potentially real threats of removal of both children and financial resources from the woman.
In each of these cases, the rights of women are violated and in particular ways. Many women and girls may be raised to coddle men and be polite on the matters on arguing for and affirming their own rights if they have not been kept bereft of proper knowledge and education of their rights to be equal with the men in their lives.
As an individual who is not a woman or a girl, the freedom, socially, exists for me to speak with greater freedom for the rights of women and girls, with more assertiveness and boldness of tone. The tone and assertiveness coming from the proper look at the documents listing women’s rights as fundamental rights for the ability of women to live equally with the men in their lives.
These collective efforts across borders can be the strongest basis, possibly, for action to reduce and eliminate forms of VAW in a similar way to a mass vaccination against a particular disease. Behaviors were taken for granted by men, and become unpalatable socially.
This creates a formation of a movement to eliminate the social ills of VAW. It comes from movements to create international rights documents from which organizations can point to for the proper orientation on the equality of women and the stipulations upon which to base mass activism for the elimination of VAW.
Then the coordination of the women’s movement and the NGOs within the constraints of the Declaration and other documents, at all levels, can produce a significant change in short amounts of time; although, and of course, these movements will take, potentially, several generations in some geographic divisions of the world. Some sexism and misogyny are deeply rooted; others benign.
Article 4(q) speaks to the need to encourage not only the women’s rights movements as a whole and the NGOs as individual organizations but also the intergovernmental regional organizations – big collectives – in order to eliminate VAW.
“As appropriate,” the programmes should set about the inclusion of VAW’s elimination as an important marker of the equal rights of women in the society in addition to the action plans in a manner of speaking, the programmes by which VAW can be eliminated or kept a priority.
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- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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Photo by Pierrick VAN-TROOST on Unsplash