One of the focuses of this year’s International Women’s Day, as well as the theme Commission on the Status of Women, is ending violence against women and girls, and with good reason. Last fall, the point-blank shooting of a Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, while she was carpooling home from school riveted the world, drawing attention to the plight of women and girls in Central Asia. But a few months later, we were reminded that gender-based violence is hardly relegated to one particular country.
In December, a 23-year-old medical student, Jyoti Singh Pandey, was beaten and gang-raped on a bus in India, sparking international outrage. And at the end of January, at least 19 women were brutally attacked in Egypt, where public violence against women has continued to rise precipitously in recent years. Just recently, the high-profile shooting of Reeva Steenkamp in South Africa tore through the international media yet again, spotlighting gender violence in a nation where a woman is raped every 17 seconds.
Early this month, Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.) of the United States House of Representatives reminded American politicians that sexual violence is neither an international nor a partisan problem. In the U.S., nearly 35,000 people are raped, physically abused, or stalked by an intimate partner every day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey.
These specific statistics and high-profile cases, appalling as they are, say nothing of the millions of women around the world whose endurance of violence on a daily basis does not rise to the attention of the international media. Every year, more than 500,000 women are sold into sex slavery. Roughly 60 million girls worldwide are child brides. In conflict zones, rape and sexual violence have become all too common weapons of modern war. All told, an estimated seven out of ten women alive today experience physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives.
In some parts of the world, the plight of women and girls is certainly getting worse, and in others it seems, inconceivably, that the scourge of violence is simply not improving. In the U.S., for example, one in six women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape, and in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom, one in four has experienced domestic abuse. But there is some positive news, too.
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| Marie Hernando, Vice Chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, speaking at a "One Billion Rising" campaign event, in which UN officials joined millions of people around the world taking a stance against gender-based violence. The event was held under the auspices of the “UNiTE to End Violence against Women” campaign. (UN Photo/Rick Bajornas) |
In 2009, United Nation’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a seven-year campaign, UNiTE, to end “the global pandemic of violence against women and girls.” Since then, nine United Nations agencies have collaborated to jump-start top-down campaigns to pass protective legislation and raise awareness in every country of the world. They have also led bottom-up efforts to educate both men and women on issues ranging from domestic violence to conflict-related rape, from Rwanda to Fiji, from Mexico to Tanzania.
In addition to other UN-backed programs, the UNiTE campaign has earned some major successes in the ongoing struggle to end violence against women, but there’s much more work to be done.
UNiTED We Stand
In some ways, the UNiTE campaign has acted as a kind of international and institutional “re-up”—a global reminder of the promises that 79 countries made when signing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
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| Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon delivers the closing remarks at the Fifth Annual Women's Empowerment Principles Event, co-hosted by the UN Global Compact and UN Women, in observance of International Women’s Day. (UN Photo/Rick Bajornas) |
The UNiTE campaign has advocated for all nations to pass and enforce laws punishing violence against women, with a particular emphasis on those nations—home to an estimated 603 million women—where domestic violence is still not considered a crime. The campaign also targets conflict zones, where women and girls are especially vulnerable to sexual assault and rape.
For example, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Syrian Arab Republic has worked to provide refugees with access to legal and counseling services to combat gender-based violence since the conflict there began two years ago. The number of refugees from Syria—the vast majority of whom are women and children—now exceeds one million.
The Laws of the Land
Among the successes in recent years is UN Women’s effort to build what’s known as the Global Virtual Knowledge Center. Developed in partnership with civil society groups, the website has been translated into 50 languages, and provides tools to grassroots advocates and lawmakers. The site lays out a series of simple steps illustrating how a civil society group or individual policymaker might go about developing legislation to end violence against women and girls—one of the primary goals of the UNiTE campaign.
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| Nicole Ameline, Vice Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), speaking to correspondents on the work of CEDAW last October.(UN Photo/Rick Bajornas) |
So far, these efforts by UN Women, in addition to other programs, have succeeded in helping advocates and policymakers in Colombia, Sierra Leone, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe pass legislation that will help prevent, among other things, domestic violence and rape. In Rwanda, the UN Development Program (UNDP) aided local lawmakers in drafting legislation that could go a long way toward protecting women and girls, especially at home.
Top Down, Bottom Up
The UNiTE campaign has also successfully launched a series of data-gathering efforts and public-awareness campaigns. While such missions might not seem immediately crucial in a world where women are facing the threat of very real, daily violence, such campaigns are essential for laying the groundwork for nationwide action. For instance, in Jamaica, UNDP’s research on gender-based violence helped to catalyze and inform the country’s national action plan.
Similarly, in an effort to engage men and boys, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has launched a series of programs to encourage and inspire men to reject gender violence—both on a village-to-village level and in the halls of government. In creating a global Network of Men Leaders in 2009 and drawing high-profile proponents, like Brazilian author Paulo Coehlo, Ban has begun the important work of building an international coalition to end violence against women and girls. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, UNESCO has launched a program enlisting young male and female students as ambassadors to prevent gender violence in their communities.
Perhaps one of the most quantifiable successes—in a realm where progress is often incremental—is in international efforts to end Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (FGM/C). In December, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a worldwide ban on FGM/C, urging nations to both publicize the dangers of the practice and punish those who commit it.
While FGM/C is hardly a thing of the past, UNICEF estimates that instances of mutilation and cutting have decreased dramatically. In a study that included 29 countries across Africa and the Middle East, UNICEF found that “an average of 36 percent of girls aged 15-19 have been cut compared to an estimated 53 percent of women aged 45-49.” While many say 36 percent is still too many, it’s a major step in the right direction.
A Holistic Solution
While much has been done in the past few years to reduce violence against women and girls worldwide, UN agencies involved in the struggle emphasize that we’re still very much at the beginning of what will be a long journey. Solving the horrific problem will require addressing a more basic issue of inequality, said Michele Bachelet, the head of UN Women and the former president of Chile, in an interview in December. As it stands, there is no country in the world in which women are paid equally as men, and women are still the victims of rape and sexual violence the vast majority of the time.
Bachelet has underscored the need for a holistic solution. “During my lifetime, I realized that discrimination was not accidental, that there were structural roots and causes to it. So if we wanted to change women’s lives, we need to deal with those root causes,” she said. “[Through] building alliances and partnerships with others, we can continue [to] progress.”