Violence Against Women

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to prevent violence against women.

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to open this timely debate on violence against women. As noble Lords will appreciate, it is timed to coincide with the annual International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November, designated by the UN General Assembly to raise awareness of the fact that women around the world are subject to rape, domestic violence and other forms of violence, the scale and true nature of which is often hidden. Each year, this creates an opportunity for individuals, groups and NGOs such as Women for Women International, UN Women, UNICEF, ActionAid and of course DfID—to name but a few—to promote 16 days of activism, joining together to speak out against and raise awareness of the need to end violence against women. Over the past few days, I have found the tweets of these various organisations extremely illuminating. I am delighted that this debate falls within the 16-day campaign period which ends on 10 December. I hope that it, too, will serve to highlight and draw attention to some of the issues both domestically and internationally which so many others around the world are also currently discussing.

I am far from an expert in this area and look forward to hearing from noble Lords across the Chamber who speak with great experience and authority. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, who, along with my honourable friend Jane Ellison in the other place, has been a leading campaigner on the issue of female genital mutilation. I look forward to her contribution to the debate. I look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, whose review into the treatment of rape complaints by public authorities has had such a significant impact.

I am also delighted that we will hear from three noble Lords. As in so many areas of policy, we need the support of men for things to change and for progress to be made. Here, I take the opportunity to pay tribute to two men of vision who have by their actions proved this point. Andrew Mitchell, when Secretary of State at DfID, ensured that women and girls are at the heart of every DfID programme—that includes 16 programmes in this area alone. As he said on International Women’s Day earlier this year,

“Discrimination and violence destroys the potential of girls and women in developing countries and prevents them from pulling themselves out of poverty”.

Also, the announcement of our Foreign Secretary, William Hague, earlier this month on preventing sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations was groundbreaking. I will return to that later in my remarks.

Before preparing for this debate, I was of course aware of the basic facts and statistics with regard to domestic violence, many of which have been raised in this Chamber during Questions or in debates, and will I am sure be raised again today. But looking through the briefings which we will all have been sent, I confess to being utterly shocked by the extent of what is going on under our own eyes. A friend of mine was recently hospitalised with broken ribs. It turned out that her husband had been beating her for years and neither her friends nor her family had any idea. She is one of the fewer than one in four victims who, suffering abuse at the hands of their partner, report it to the police. That means we have to do more to help victims feel confident about reporting these crimes and overcome the feelings of guilt they have about the consequences of doing so. As a society, we are failing to remedy the tragedy of gendered violence. In the UK alone, two women every week are killed by a partner or ex-partner, and every year 60,000 women are raped. Sexual harassment in schools, communities and workplaces is routine.

However, the hour is late and the time is tight. I shall focus my comments on the global situation. I hope that my noble friend in her closing remarks will expand on recent changes domestically which are addressing many of the challenges that we will discuss today. They include the new anti-stalking legislation, the Home Office’s call to end violence against women and girls and the fact that forcing a girl to marry against her will is to become a criminal offence in England and Wales.

I am sure that all of us in this Chamber welcome the Government’s new cross-governmental definition of domestic violence, which will be implemented next March. That definition will reduce the age at which domestic violence can be recognised from 18 to 16—something that is necessary given that the British Crime Survey in 2010 found that 16 to 19 year-olds are the most likely to suffer abuse from a partner. It affects more than one in 10 girls in that age group.

Violence against women and girls is the most widespread form of abuse world wide, affecting one-third of all women in their lifetime. Addressing violence against women and girls is a central development goal in its own right and key to achieving other development outcomes for individual women and their families, communities and nations. Globally, 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not yet considered a crime.

To mention a few specific issues, more than 60 million girls are child brides. I recommend the report of the APPG on Population, Development and Reproductive Health, A Childhood Lost, published earlier this week, which is packed with detailed information spelling out the consequences of child marriage, as well as some utterly tragic case histories.

Yesterday’s horrifying news of the beheading of a 15 year-old in northern Afghanistan because her father thought she was too young to marry, is the latest in an alarming trend of similar violence in the area. About 100 million to 140 million girls and women have experienced FGM. More than 600,000 women and girls are trafficked across borders each year, the vast majority for sexual exploitation. In a survey in India, 50% of men and women agree that wife beating is justified if the woman disrespects her in-laws or neglects the house. When violence against women is justified and attributed to the victim, change is very unlikely to occur.

In the South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reportedly the worst place in the world to be a woman or a child, there is an epidemic of rape—according to UNFPA, an average of 40 women every day. Given how difficult it is to get news out from some of those remote places, we can only assume that these dreadful stories are merely the tip of the iceberg.

As mentioned earlier, in his speech on 14 November about the use of violence and rape in war, William Hague said that we must shatter the culture of impunity for those who use rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war and shift the balance of shame away from survivors to the perpetrators of that crime. The Foreign Secretary is right to address what is a common view in some parts of the world that it is the victims who should feel ashamed. We need a cultural change through education and media so that women are empowered and gender relations can be built that sustain respect, harmony and non-violence. Those are all issues which need to be addressed both for the victims’ sake and for development reasons

Violence against women has its roots deeply embedded in the inequality between men and women. Violence is used as a tool to maintain subordination of and control over women. Gender inequalities and discrimination are exacerbated during crisis and social breakdown, meaning that already vulnerable girls and women are increasingly less likely to be able to defend themselves, or to break the cycle.

As I mentioned, violence against females impacts negatively on economic growth—indeed, the cost to society is billions of dollars in lost opportunities from education and employment as well as more direct costs for policing, healthcare and the justice system. Violence against girls has a direct correlation to poor performance in school, lower enrolment and high dropout rates. Females are often forced into pregnancy, and abuse can have serious repercussions for their physical and psychological ability to gain employment and participate in what we would consider to be normal lives.

I end by looking back briefly to the origins of this particular day. The international recognition that women have a right to a life free from violence is recent. Historically, their struggle with violence, and with the impunity that often protects the perpetrators, has been linked with their fight to overcome discrimination. Since its founding, the United Nations has concerned itself with the advancement of women's rights, but it was not until 1993 that it specifically targeted the high rates of violence against women. One of the aims of the resolution which adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was to overturn the prevailing governmental stance that violence against women was a private, domestic matter, not requiring state intervention.

Next March, Governments, NGOs and civil society leaders will again meet at the UN in New York for the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The priority theme is the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. As they meet, and as we continue our deliberations today, I hope that they and we bear in mind the remarks made at that meeting nearly 20 years ago by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, when he issued a statement in preparation of the declaration. He said:

“The struggle for women’s rights, and the task of creating a new United Nations, able to promote peace and the values which nurture and sustain it, are one and the same. Today—more than ever—the cause of women is the cause of all humanity”.