WUNRN
Office of the UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights
5 July 2011 - Prevention of violence against women was the
focus of a discussion on women’s human rights held last month at the UN in
“In the struggle to eradicate violence against women, we
should all task ourselves to be leading voices and engines of action,” said UN
Human Rights chief Navi Pillay.
“One third of women in the world have experienced or will
experience some form of violence in their lives,” Pillay said. “In some
contexts up to 60 per cent of women experience physical violence at least once
in their lifetime,” she added.
She explained that the prevalence of violence against women
was so high that no State had or would have the means to deal with the extent
of the violations and the number of victims. “This is why preventing violence
from happening in the first place must be central to any strategy to eliminate
violence against women,” she pointed out.
The UN defines three levels of prevention: primary, such as
preventing violence from happening in the first place; secondary, which
corresponds to the immediate response after violence has occurred to limit its
consequences; and tertiary, or the longer-term care and support for those who
have suffered violence.
Pillay stressed the lack of sustained funding for
implemented related programmes. “The lack of consistent funding for initiatives
and policies aimed at preventing violence against women hampers sustainable
implementation of programmes and activities over time and greatly affects their
impact,” she said.
She added that prevention initiatives focusing on the
underlying causes of violence against women, such as gender inequality and the
feminization of poverty, were scarce. “Yet, eliminating violence against women
necessarily encompasses measures to empower women to stand for their own
rights, make decisions on their lives and participate fully in the life of
their communities,” she explained.
“Primary prevention is a new frontier in the field of
violence against women,” said Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of UN
Women, the office that works for gender equality and the empowerment of women.
She explained that the focus on primary prevention enabled
to re-enforce the “critical, and somewhat revolutionary” notion that “violence
against women is not inevitable, it can be systematically addressed, reduced
and, with persistence, eliminated”.
Ending violence against women “is a long-term project that
involves transforming gender relations,” stressed. However, there are key
strategic investments in women’s empowerment that “can also serve as protective
and preventive factors against violence,” she added.
Bachelet said that the strategic investments included
ensuring that girls complete secondary education, delaying the age of marriage
furthering women’s reproductive health and rights, ensuring women’s economic
autonomy and security, and increasing women’s participation in decision-making
positions and political power, in order to influence policies and institutional
practices that perpetuate impunity and tolerance for violence against women.
Primary prevention also included universal strategies that can reach large
population groups, for instance, school-based like skills training for all
children.
In urging governments to promote and support women’s
empowerment, Rashida Manjoo, the UN expert on violence against women, said that
women that are empowered “understand that they are not destined to
subordination and violence; they resist oppression; and they develop their
capabilities as autonomous beings and they increasingly question the terms of
their existence in both public and private spheres.”