REPORT ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

The heart-rending incident that took place in Swat on October 9, 2012, gave a fresh impetus and new resolve to the international struggle for eliminating violence against women and ensuring their rights. The whole world seems to be echoing with the brave and committed slogan ‘I am Malala.’ Attack on Malala Yusufzai is a reflection of the sick mentality of those people, who are by no means willing to give the due rights to girls and women.

According to the United Nations, in 85 out of 90 societies of the world, women are beaten up and up to 70 per cent women of the world pass through the dreadful experience of violence. Under the auspices of the United Nations, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women is observed each year on November 25, to create social awareness about the implications of violence against women and to strengthen the worldwide efforts for bringing an end to this disdainful practice.

Along with this, from November 25 to December 10, a campaign called ’16 days of activism against gender violence’ also starts.

This year, the theme of the sixteen-day global campaign is ‘From peace in the home to peace in the world. Let us challenge militarism and end violence against women.’

The campaign starts on November 25 with the International Day Against Violence Against Women and ends on December 10, with the observance of International Human Rights Day. It is meant to symbolically link violence against women with human rights and to emphasise that such violence is a violation of human rights. This 16-day period also highlights other significant dates including November 29, that is, International Women Human Rights Defence Day, December 1, World Aids Day and December 6, which marks the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. Violence against women takes many forms: physical, sexual, psychological and economic. These forms of violence are inter-related and affect women from before birth to old age.

In case of war and armed conflict, violence against women assumes a more serious form, because rape has since long been used as a war tactics, with violence against women during or after armed conflicts reported in every national or non-international war zone.

Amnesty International has analysed the dire state of violence against women in the world in the following words: ‘Using the available data we can see that if the world were a global village of 1000 people, half the population (500) would be women. There would have been 510 women, but ten were either never born through gender selective abortion, or died in infancy from neglect. In a number of the village’s various communities, girls are considered to be of lesser value than boys. Tradition and masculine inheritance rights reinforce this discrimination against women. The women of the village are increasingly at risk of contracting HIV-Aids. Three women in the village already have the disease. Education about it is patchy and the use of contraception to prevent its spread is limited. One hundred and sixty seven women of the village have been beaten or coerced into sex. One in every three women has a chance of being abused in this way. Women of the village face the risk of being killed by their own family members. In fact, 70 per cent of all murdered women would have been killed by their own male partners. Only 60 women in the village have ever disclosed the violence they were subjected to and a further 70 of them have only spoken out when interviewed for a survey. Hundred of the women have been the victims of rape or attempted rape and every woman faces a high risk of this violence, especially if the village is plunged into war. Across the village, violence against women goes unreported under-investigated and unchecked.’

 Pakistan is also a small part of this global village and the condition of violence against women in the country is becoming very grim and serious. It can be judged from Orat Foundation’s report on violence against women in Pakistan, a qualitative review of statistics for 2011. According to this report, the incidents of violence against women in Pakistan increased by 12.78 per cent from 2008 to 2011. During this period, their number rose from 7571 to 8539. In this way, in 2011, an average of 24 incidents of violence against women were reported daily in Pakistan. The condition of district Lahore where 754 such incidents were reported, was the most serious in the country. With 667 and 449 violent incidents, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi were second and third, respectively in this list.

These disturbing statistics give us some idea of the level of violence against women in Pakistan, but they do not paint the whole picture, because all such statistics are based on media reports. During the past few years, our media has focused much of its attention on the deteriorating law and order situation in the country, uncertain political atmosphere, kidnappings and target killings in Sindh and Balochistan and the devastation caused by the floods in 2010 and 2011. In these circumstances, how could the reporting of violence against women become a priority for our media? Thus, it is an all-admitted fact that most of the incidents of violence against women are not reported in the media. As long as there is no availability of objectively and systematically obtained data in this connection and as long as there is no easy public access to this data, we will have to depend on the statistics provided by the media. These statistics may be valid to a certain extent but they are not completely reliable. However, in the absence of authentic data, they may give us some idea of the gravity of the situation with reference to violence against women in the country. Police record is also an important source of getting data about violence against women in Pakistan, but this data too is not wholly reliable. On account of the negative attitude of the police officials, typical image of the police department and horrifying atmosphere prevailing in the police stations, a large number of violent incidents against women remain unreported.

When such cases are neither registered nor reported, how can we expect the law to be effective in tackling this problem? Experts recommend a greater participation of women in the country’s justice system, especially in the police department, as an important means of overcoming the problem. It is an internationally recognised fact that the presence of female staff in the police and the reporting of incidents of rape are closely related to each other. But despite that, only nine per cent police officials of the world are women. According to the UN Report called World’s Women 2010, female staff makes up only three per cent of the entire police force in South Asia. In its research study, an NGO named Individual Land has stated that the police department of Pakistan has got 3700 women, who are less than one per cent of the total number of police officials.

Innumerable incidents of violence against women are not brought to the limelight and remain hidden within the four walls of the house. As mentioned earlier, violence against women may be physical, psychological or economic and perhaps, there is hardly any house in the world where at one time or the other, women have not been subjected to beating, threats, intimidation, humiliation and harassment. United Nations have revealed the fact that one out of every three women in the world has to pass through the bitter experience of gender-based abuse, at least once in her life. The condition of unreported violence in Pakistan is not different from the rest of the world, but it is perhaps, of a much more serious nature, because as reported by Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, 90 per cent of married Pakistani women have to suffer hardships at the hands of their husbands. Women who experience violence suffer a range of health problems and their ability to participate in public life is diminished.

Violence against women harms families and communities across generations and reinforces other violence prevalent in society. Violence against women also impoverishes their families, communities and nations. It has a very harmful impact on the psychology, training and upbringing of children. Besides this, societies also have to bear the high costs of violence against women. This fact is very often ignored. According to the United Nations, they include the direct costs of the services to treat and support abused women and their children and to bring perpetrators to justice. The indirect costs include lost employment and productivity and the cost in human pain, fate and suffering. The cost of intimate partner violence in the United States alone exceeds $5.8 billion per year. $4.1 billion is for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly $1.8 billion. A study in the United Kingdom estimated the total direct and indirect costs of domestic violence, including pain and suffering, to be 23 billion per year or 440 per person.

Such heavy losses resulting from violence against women, are the outcome of a negative impression in societies, due to which men regard violence against women as justified and women too believe that violence against them is justified. According to the UN Report on the progress of world’s women 2010-11, more than one-quarter of people living in 17 out of 41 countries of the world believe that men have the right to beat their women.

Similarly, according to the UN’s report on world’s women 2010, in 33 countries of the world whose statistics are available, the percentage of women that found it appropriate to be hit or beaten or one of these acts varies considerably. Around 29 per cent of women agreed that being hit or beaten for arguing with the husband was justifiable, 25 per cent for refusing to have sex with the husband and 21 per cent for burning the food. A government sponsored study conducted in Punjab in 2011 revealed that 42 per cent of women accept violence as part of their fate. The world is now beginning to realise the need for taking firm action against this evil and most people today think violence against women ought to be a crime and see it as a violation of human rights. This was not always the case. As late as 1999, Euro barometer’s survey found that as many as one in three Europeans thought violence against women should probably not be considered a crime. (Euro barometer 2010). But despite that, there has not been any significant reduction in the number of violent incidents against women. The well-known American research journal Political Science Review has recently published a research paper with the title ‘The civic origins of progressive policy change, combating violence against women in global perspective 1975-2005’. According to it, in Europe, violence against women is far more dangerous to the female population than terrorism or cancer. As many as 45 per cent of European women have been the victims or physical and sexual violence.

Experts are of the view that presence of effective laws can be helpful in reducing the number of shameful incidents of violence against women. International researches have proved the fact that only a limited number of people (22 per cent) consider violence against women to be justified in the countries having strict laws against domestic violence. However, 50 per cent of the people living in the countries with no such laws believe that violence against women is justified. It is in spite of the fact that over the past four decades, violence against women has come to be seen as a violation of human rights and an important concern for social policy. Yet government action remains uneven. Some countries have adopted comprehensive policies to combat violence against women (VAW), whereas others have been slow to address the problem. It can be judged from the statistics given in the UN’s report on the progress of world’s women 2011-12, according to which 125 out of 194 countries of the world have legislation against domestic violence. But there is no legislation against domestic violence in 66 countries of the world, including four South Asian countries. In the same way, 117 countries of the world have laws against sexual harassment, while no such laws exist in 57 other countries, including three South Asian countries. Moreover, 52 countries of the world have laws with reference to marital rape, but there has not so far been any legislation in this connection in 127 countries, including six South Asian countries.

Our present government has taken some appreciable steps aimed at improving the status of women in the country. They include National National Commission on the status of women bill 2012, Acid control and acid [prevention act 2011, prevention of anti-women practices (criminal law amendment) act 2011, protection against harassment of women at the work place act 2010, section 509 of the penal code amended in February 2010, standard operating procedures for medico-legal examination of female victims of violence 2010 and domestic violence (prevention and protection) bill 2009. But effective implementation and enforcement of these laws is necessary for bringing about a real change in the level of violence against women in the country. It should be remembered that violence against women is an obstacle to the achievement of the objectives of equality, development and peace. At the resent moment, peace and progress are our top priorities, but they cannot be achieved without the creation of a society free from violence against women.