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120. The absence of adequate gender-disaggregated data and statistics on the incidence of violence makes the elaboration of programmes and monitoring of changes difficult. Lack of or inadequate documentation and research on domestic violence, sexual harassment and violence against women and girls in private and in public, including the workplace, impede efforts to design specific intervention strategies. Experience in a number of countries shows that women and men can be mobilized to overcome violence in all its forms and that effective public measures can be taken to address both the causes and the consequences of violence. Men’s groups mobilizing against gender violence are necessary allies for change.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The ability to parse information and delineate what is happening to different sectors of a society, in societies or even in the global community, can limit the programs, initiatives, and movements intended to change the social and economic inequalities of the world.
We can find this in the violence against women statistics, in part. The problem arises through the ways in which there is a continual onslaught against the public through imposed ignorance, via the shutdown of data gathering mechanisms that compile information on behalf of the public or the general good.
For example, without dis-aggregated data – info not cut up into groups, the violence against women statistics can be, in essence, black boxes. Those that do not have clear-cut answers as to the levels of violence against women, the forms of violence against women, the severity per forms of violence against women, and the ones women are more often subject to, and the comparison of the aforementioned with the men in societies.
This brings the notion or proposal, really, of the gender-disaggregated data as an important hallmark of what we might consider more equal societies. Those that take care and concern for the wellbeing of women seriously.
With the proper data, the elaboration and monitoring can be done more easily or with fewer consequences. Now, we can have more documentation, where solid data comes from the United Nations, the World Health Organization, rights groups, and national statistics. More documentation on violence against women in order to develop national and international action plans.
Without the data on domestic violence, sexual harassment, and violence against women and girls, our social and cultural dialogue, legal responsiveness, and national and international plans of action can be bereft of their full flowering of effect.
Of course, there are explicit efforts to prevent the work for more equality. This is known; this is done covertly, or overtly. But the important work of going about reducing and eventually eliminating violence against women remains part of the powerful waves of history marking the progression from terrible conditions for women to more and more equal status for women and girls.
Good data, robust analysis, and then the development and implementation of national and international plans of action in line with these efforts is important for the reduction and eventual elimination against women, the social movements, including MeToo and associated collective social actions, can work to build coalitions between communities and nations for the health and wellness of women, families, and societies.
Men’s groups can help with the mobilizztion as well, as noted, but, likely, only in coalition with many other collectives.
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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 and the optional protocol (1993).
- Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
- 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.
- UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
- 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
- 2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.
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