Council of
Launching Conference
Keynote statement by
Yakın Etürk, UN Special
Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes and
consequences
“Changing attitudes to combat
violence against women”
Distinguished
participants,
It is with great honour and
pleasure that I deliver this keynote speech on the occasion of the Council of
Europe campaign on the elimination of violence against
women.
Introduction
The vision that inspires the
Council of Europe campaign is based on the global agenda to end all forms of
violence against women at all levels. As articulated by the Beijing Platform for
Action eleven years ago, “… violence both violates and impairs or nullifies the
enjoyment by women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. …In all
societies, to a greater or lesser degree, women and girls are subjected to
physical , sexual and psychological abuse that cuts across lines of income,
class and culture.…Violence against women is a manifestation of the historically
unequal power relations between men and women ” (Beijing Platform for Action,
para 112).
The global women’s movement
has succeeded in making violence against women a public policy issue at the
international level, which has been slowly but surely trickling down to the
national level policy framework. There is
a growing
universal culture for women’s human rights that demonstrates that violence is
not about the vulnerability of women, nor simply acts by deviant men or a
characteristic of primitive cultures. Instead, the problem is understood to be
rooted in an universal patriarchal culture entrenched in our consciousness as
women and men, and in the core values and institutions of societies, albeit in
diverse forms and varying degrees. Dynamics of gender relations, in other words,
share a common history; therefore, they are both local and global; particular and
universal.
Understanding the diverse
trajectories of women’s individual and collective resistance to oppression and
violence provides a powerful insight to how the agenda has evolved and how it
can be moved forward in tackling the ‘pandemic’ of violence against
women.
On 25 November 1992, UN
international Day of No Violence against Women, Filomena Pacsi – an organization
of miner women in the Peruvian Andes – organized an event where about 300 women
marched through their community with placards saying ‘Here you don’t beat
women’. Their husbands threatened them, men stood aside and jeered. The march
was like a bomb. In 1996, they marched again. This time, men followed the march
and said they were there because, ‘Thanks to Filomena Pacsi, we have learned not
to treat our women this way, because it affects all of us’.[1]
This was, no doubt, not due to
a revelation from above, but rather an awakening which was stimulated by social
praxis. Can we assume from the above anecdote that violence against women is no
longer a problem in the Peruvian
Andes? The answer is, ‘most likely not’. However, we can safely assume that, in
that community, the silence around the problem no longer exists, women’s
resistance to violence continues, the consensus that violence against women is
“normal” has been ruptured and hopefully the authorities have assumed their
positive obligation to address the problem. At a more general level what this
anecdote tells us is that men who are part of the problem have to be made part
of the solution and that community compliance and cooperation is of paramount
importance if efforts to combat violence against women are not to go astray.
This requires, among other
strategies, challenging and changing values and attitudes with respect to gender
relations and the use of violence against women as a patriarchal privilege
particularly in the private sphere. Societies across the globe – through their
laws and courts – continue to countenance legal defenses that privilege and
benefit men committing violence against women. The privilege can be and must be revoked by criminalizing all
acts of violence against women. Non-discriminatory legislation is an essential
component of democratic governance, for providing women equal access to justice
and for ensuring that crimes against women are not committed with impunity. However, a legal approach alone is not
enough to transform patriarchal values that sustain and justify violence.
Changing Attitudes
Combating violence against
women requires a holistic strategy that employs multiple approaches that
supplement the human rights approach in intervening at the level of the
individual, the level of the community, the level of the state and the
transnational arena. In my report to the Commission on Human Rights this year I
elaborated such an approach at each level in considering the due diligence
obligation of the state to prevent, investigate and in accordance with national
legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are
perpetuated by the state or private persons ((E/CN.4/2006/61).
In addressing the issue of
changing attitudes, I would like to emphasize dimensions of the problem at three
levels of intervention that needs to be considered simultaneously, the first two
being at the macro level involving societal / community attitudes and the third
at the micro level involving individual attitudes: (i) attitudes embedded in
deeply rooted patriarchal norms and values that operate to legitimize, approve
or condone the use of violence against women; (ii) attitudes regarding gender
roles embedded in the construction of power and domination based masculinity and
subordinate femininity in sustaining an unequal gender order; and (iii)
attitudes of individual men known to be systematically violent. While, the
former two requires attitudinal change to prevent violence from occurring in the
first place by creating critical consciousness and destabilizing the foundation
of hegemonic masculinity, the third level requires responding to violence by
challenging the motivations and attitudes underpinning the violent behavior of
individual men.
Changing attitudes at the
macro level
Creating critical
consciousness
An essential element of
changing attitudes at the societal level must start with creating a public
discourse that challenges the dominant societal values and norms regulating
sexuality, defining acceptable patterns of masculine and feminine identities and
structuring of gender relations. This requires states to actively engage in what
I have called “cultural negotiation” to create critical consciousness with
respect to popular notions of culture and its reproduction in society.
Negotiating culture is a politically bold move as it (a) draws on positive
elements within culture to demystify the oppressive elements of culture-based
discourses; (b) demonstrates that culture is not an immutable and homogenous
entity; and (c) identifies and contests the legitimacy of those who monopolize
the right to speak on behalf of culture, religion, national interest and other
oppressive and discriminatory values used to create consensus and mass
mobilization, whether this takes place within state apparatuses or in civil
society.
Through public campaigns,
dissemination of gender sensitive information and responsible media reporting
the promotion of hegemonic and discriminatory gender norms and practices
presented as part of the national, natural or divinely ordained order of things
can be challenged, which will
contribute to expanding public space for alternative views and it will encourage
and empower women and men alike to question notions of male superiority and
domination and the taken for granted truths that legitimize them. Within this
context, it is important that the differentially situated voices in society are
heard and that social movements particularly women’s organizations facilitating
this are recognized and supported by the authorities.
The Beijing Platform for
Action identified the media as having the potential to make an invaluable
contribution towards a gender sensitive public discourse. Given the advanced
level of information technologies today, the media commands incredible power in
formulating opinions and attitudes which transcends national boundaries. This
power must be used with responsibility to effectively change attitudes that are
discriminatory and tolerant of violence.
The Platform calls upon the media to develop codes of conduct and other
forms of self-regulation to promote non-stereotypical portrayals and degrading
images of women and avoid sensationalized reporting of violence against women.
The few existing good practices in this regard should be acknowledged and
integrated into national, regional and international strategies to combat
violence.
Public education campaigns are
another powerful way of mobilizing community support for women’s rights and for
promoting a zero tolerance to violence. While campaigns are often time bound, in
order to achieve sustainability, they must aim to institutionalize their basic
goals and principles into state policy, school curricula and working methods of
key public institutions such as the police, the judiciary, immigration and
health services and supported with a gender sensitive national budget. Public
statements made by government leaders and other public figures have a similar
impact of either empowering or disempowering the culture of violence. The state is required to send an unequivocal message
that all forms of violence against women is a serious criminal act that will be
investigated, prosecuted and punished, regardless of who the perpetuator is and
what the motivation may be.
In
this respect, it is particularly important to avoid selective response to the
more sensationalized types of violence, such as honour related crimes or FGM, as
is often the case. Such a selective perception fragments the phenomenon of
violence against women, and results in normalizing certain types of violence
while the “other” becomes stigmatized as the site of
violence.
Deconstructing masculinity
Finally, if women are to live
a life free of violence efforts to change attitudes must include strategies to
challenge notions of masculinity based on policing women’s sexuality and /or on
sustaining male supremacy in public and private life. Violence is not only an
act of individual men but it is embedded in the way manhood is constructed,
reinforced and challenged under societal pressures, social approval mechanisms
and crisis situations. During my official visits to diverse countries I have
seen that violence against women
tends to intensify when men experience displacement and dispossession related to
economic transformations, migration, war, foreign occupation or other situations
where masculinities compete and power relations are altered in society. The
impact of such situations on women is rarely taken into consideration in
development, humanitarian and/or reconstruction programmes and immigration /
refugee policies.
It must be borne in mind that
while social change or conflict eliminates some forms of masculinity, hegemonic
masculinity is re-configured thus reproducing gender inequality in discrete and
subtle forms. Therefore, the sources of inequality must be attacked by
de-linking power and masculinity at all levels and by recognizing and promoting
alternative masculinities that are respectful of women’s rights. An environment
that offers channels of equal participation for all members of society and
inclusive democratic governance can foster such egalitarian values.
Changing attitudes at the
micro level
While transformative change is
carefully tailored, in the short run, the behaviour of violent men also needs to
be confronted and addressed. In
various countries different models have been developed and employed by
governmental and non-governmental organizations, particularly pro-feminist men,
in addressing violent male behaviour. Good practices in this regard should be
documented and disseminated so that they can be adapted to particular local
conditions. Efforts to deal with violent men, however, must not lead to a
deviation from the commitment to support women’s empowerment and the diversion
of resources from women’s programmes. Women should not have to subsidize the
treatment of violent men. Furthermore, let us not forget that elimination of
violence against women is inherently a project of women’s
empowerment.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we must
celebrate that eradicating violence against women and ensuring that human rights
are universally enjoyed has become a common goal and a shared obligation. The progress achieved thus far towards
this goal, although uneven and with notorious exceptions, has verified our
conviction that oppressive values, institutions and unequal relationships can be
transformed. However, we must be vigilant of the post-9/11 environment, where
tensions among peoples across the globe have intensified, xenophobia and
anti-immigrant sentiments heightened, and an overall conservatism has dominated
global politics. This situation is not only making consensus in multi-lateral
dialogue more difficult but it is directly threatening women’s rights,
particularly in the areas of reproductive and sexual rights, including sexual
orientation. The Council of Europe
campaign on violence against women –if states embrace it with determination and
commitment – provides a renewed opportunity to overcome these negative trends
within the European region itself and through the bilateral and multilateral
contributions of individual member states, the goals of the campaign can
transcend its geographic boundaries. With such an expectation I believe that
this campaign will prove to be another milestone towards women’s empowerment and
gender equality.
As the Special Rapporteur on
violence against women, I will monitor the process closely and would like to
express my readiness to collaborate with the COE and its member states in
realizing the goals of this campaign.
Thank you.