WUNRN
Women's Link Worldwide
Angela
González v. Spain case that Women's Link
Worldwide is currently litigating at the CEDAW Committee. This is the
first-ever case filed against Spain regarding gender-based violence before the
Committee.
CASE
OF ANGELA GONZALEZ CARRENO V. SPAIN - DISCRIMINATION & GENDER VIOLENCE AGAINST
WOMEN & MINORS
The
case of Ángela González Carreño v. Spain, presented before the Committee for
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee),
has denounced the acts of violence and discrimination suffered by the accuser
and her daughter, Andrea.
In 1999, Angela, who suffered from gender violence, fled from her residence with her daughter Andrea, who at that moment was three years old. The situation of violence continued after their escape, Ángela looked for protection for herself and her daughter before national tribunals for years, petitioning that the visitations of her daughter with the abuser be monitored, among other things. Despite presenting more than 40 police reports, the courts permitted that the regimes of visits of the aggressor to the minor continue without surveillance. As a consequence of the negligent behavior of the authorities, Andrea was assassinated by the abuser during one of the visits in 2004, when she was seven years old.
Ángela turned to the Committee to petition that they condemn the Spanish State for the impunity to the gender violence that her and her daughter suffered, asking that they declare the State responsible for the assassination of Andrea, that they recognize that minors who live surrounded by an environment of gender violence are also victims of that violence and that the courts should take into account the determination of the visits of the abusers, always prioritizing the superior interest of the minors and their right to live free of violence.
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http://opcedaw.wordpress.com/2013/12/04/looking_to_cedaw_english/
Looking to CEDAW: An Opportunity to Protect Women’s and Children’s Rights in Spain and worldwide (Women’s Link Worldwide)
Posted by simonecusack
on 4 December 2013
Gema Fernández Rodríguez de Liévana and Paloma Soria
Montañez of Women’s Link Worldwide discuss Ángela
González Carreño v. Spain, a family violence case currently pending before
the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW
Committee)
Click here to
read the post in Spanish.
Factual background
After
more than 20 years of being subjected to violence by her partner, in 1999,
Ángela Gonzalez left her family home with her three-year-old daughter Andrea
after an episode of violence that took place in front of the girl. Ángela
feared that the aggressor –Mr. Rascón – would kill her and her daughter or
cause them grave harm.
Ángela
reported the violence she had been suffering, both before the police and the
courts on several occasions, and initiated divorce proceedings. During
the following four years that she lived separated from the aggressor, Ángela
fought tirelessly to protect her daughter from her daughter’s abusive father
and used all the means at her disposal to protect her daughter. She went
before the courts repeatedly to ask, amongst other things, for Rascón’s
visitation with Andrea to be supervised. Despite her efforts and belief
in the social protection services and the judiciary, the system failed her and
her daughter completely. Rascón was allowed to have unsupervised visits
with Andrea. On 24 April 2003, during one of these unsupervised visits,
Rascón murdered his six-year-old daughter and then committed suicide.
Despite
filing more than thirty complaints seeking protection, Ángela’s abuser was
condemned only once to a misdemeanour for harassment with a fine. Ángela
had requested protection orders repeatedly for herself and her daughter.
The courts granted the protection order for Ángela, but Mr. Rascón
violated the order repeatedly, without consequences for him. A protection
order for Andrea was granted only on one occasion, but even this order was
withdrawn later because the judicial authorities said “it hindered Mr. Rascón’s
visitation rights.” In withdrawing the order, the judiciary allowed
Rascón’s visitation rights to prevail over the right of Ángela to live free of
violence and the best interests of the girl child.
After
Andrea’s death, Ángela unsuccessfully sought justice and reparations from the
State for the negligence of the authorities that led to the death of her
daughter. Ángela litigated her case through the court system in Spain,
filing before both the Supreme Court
and the Constitutional Court.
At every instance, the courts failed to recognise the authorities’
negligence in Andrea’s death, further violating the rights of both Ángela and
Andrea.
Why the CEDAW Committee?
In
her hunt for justice, Ángela decided to take her case to an international body,
the CEDAW Committee. She wanted the State to be held responsible for the
acts that led to her daughter’s death and, even more important to her, she
continues her fight in the hopes of having the case lead to systemic changes
and guarantees of non-repetition for other women and children victims of
domestic and gender-based violence.
Ángela
highly values that the CEDAW Committee is the only international body dealing
specifically with women’s rights, including the right of women to be free of
discrimination on the basis of their sex/gender. The CEDAW Committee has
developed extremely valuable expertise analysing the context of discrimination
in which the facts of individual communications brought before it take place.
This expertise has allowed it to take its views from a gender perspective
that enables the identification of harmful gender stereotyping. Moreover,
the CEDAW Committee’s case-law sets an international standard that can have an
impact on all 187 State Parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Ángela’s claim under the Optional Protocol to CEDAW
Represented
by Women’s Link Worldwide,
Angela’s communication to the CEDAW Committee alleges violations by Spain of
articles 2 (general obligations), 5 (stereotyping) and 16 (equality in marriage
and family relations) of CEDAW.
Ángela
has claimed in her communication that Spanish authorities violated article 2 of
CEDAW by failing to act with due diligence, by all means at its disposal and
without delay, to prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish the violence
committed against her and Andrea by Rascón, resulting in the murder of Andrea.
Moreover, she has claimed that Spain violated article 2 of CEDAW when,
following the murder of Andrea, its courts failed to offer Ángela an effective
judicial response or adequate reparations for the harm she had suffered as a
result of the negligent actions of the State Party.
In
addition, Ángela has claimed that the State Party’s reliance on harmful gender
stereotypes when responding to the violence she and her daughter experienced
and when determining the visitation rights of the batterer, violated article
5(a) of CEDAW.
Finally,
Ángela has claimed that the State Party failed to fulfill its due diligence
obligation to protect her rights in article 16 of CEDAW, since no remedy was
provided after she repeatedly reported the violation of her right to equality
in the economic maintenance of Andrea by Rascón.
Ángela’s expectations
Ángela’s
struggle has always been fueled by her desire to ensure that what happened to
her and her daughter doesn’t happen again to any other woman or child.
She is therefore looking to the CEDAW Committee to adopt broad reparation
measures and to issue general recommendations to the State Party that can bring
about structural changes that will better protect women and children suffering
from domestic violence. Ángela also hopes that her case will clearly
identify gender stereotyping as a root cause of violence and discrimination and
help to highlight how such stereotyping negatively affects women’s right to access
justice. She hopes that the CEDAW Committee’s views in her case will help
to highlight concrete measures that the State Party can adopt to eliminate
wrongful gender stereotyping by the judiciary and other state institutions.
Finally,
Ángela hopes that her case will help to highlight the significant gaps between
Spain’s laws and the protections available to women in practice in respect of
domestic and gender-based violence, including through the implementation of
those laws by the judiciary and other state institutions. In her opinion,
real, prompt and effective protection for victims of domestic violence and her
children is still lacking in Spain, in large part due to wrongful gender
stereotyping.
Status of proceedings
Ángela’s
case was filed in September 2012. Since then, the Spanish Government has
submitted its observations on the admissibility and merits of the communication
and Ángela has commented on those observations.
Why did Women’s Link Worldwide take this case?
Women’s Link Worldwide is an international human
rights non-profit organisation working to ensure that gender equality is a
reality around the world. With this aim, it strives to advance women’s
rights through the implementation of international human rights standards and
strategic work with courts, including strategic litigation.
Ángela’s
communication to the CEDAW Committee is the first domestic violence case from
Spain to be examined by an international body. Women’s Link Worldwide became
involved in the case because it wanted to assist Ángela in her pursuit of
justice. It also became involved in the case because it provides a unique
opportunity to review and improve implementation of Spain’s domestic violence
law (Protection Measures
against Gender Violence Act), which although
considered to be a robust law has not been implemented effectively in practice.
Women’s
Link Worldwide hopes that the provisions of CEDAW that require the Spanish
Government to end discrimination against women will arm the CEDAW Committee
well to make strong recommendations requiring structural changes that will help
to prevent similar violations to those suffered by Ángela and her daughter
Andrea. Such recommendations could include directions on how to implement
Spain’s current law on domestic violence at all levels (courts, social
services, and police) in order to ensure that victim’s rights are guaranteed
and a gender perspective is central to any considerations of domestic violence.
Women’s
Link Worldwide also became involved in Ángela case because it is illustrative
of the problems facing many women in Spain. In other words, the facts of
the case are not unique or isolated to Ángela and Andrea. In Spain, just
like in many other countries, there is a high incidence of violence against
women and a lack of adequate responses by the authorities when women try to
seek protection and remedies. In 2004, specific legislation on domestic
violence was adopted to ensure protections for victims of domestic violence,
but implementation of these laws is greatly lacking. Judges are reluctant
to enforce these laws because of their own biases, regardless of the victim’s
rights, and there is no mechanism holding them accountable to do so. At
the same time, the lack of judicial investigation leads to a high rate of cases
that are dismissed.
Women’s
Link Worldwide was also attracted to Ángela case because there is compelling
evidence about the harms of judicial stereotyping. The application of
gender stereotypes by authorities, judges and courts is one of the most
significant barriers for the elimination of gender discrimination in Spain and
in other countries, and undermines women’s ability to access justice when their
human rights are violated. Judicial gender stereotyping is also one of
the main obstacles for gender justice that Women’s Link Worldwide works to
eliminate.
Violence
against women, the absence of legal protections for the children of victims of
domestic violence and judicial gender stereotyping are present in almost all countries in the world.
Women’s Link Worldwide invites the CEDAW Committee to consider Ángela’s
communication as an opportunity to address some of these issues, with a view to
having a global impact and furthering develop States Parties’ positive
obligations to eliminate wrongful gender stereotyping in its domestic violence
case-law.
Paloma Soria Montañez has a
law degree from the University of Malaga, Spain and a Masters in International
Solidarity Action in Europe from the University of Carlos III, Madrid, Spain.
She is Senior Attorney and coordinator of the International Gender Crimes and
Human Trafficking programs at the organization Women’s Link Worldwide, where
she works from 2006.
Gema Fernández Rodríguez de Liévana
graduated with a law degree from the University Complutense, Madrid and holds a
postgraduate degree as part of the doctoral program ”International Relations:
European Union and Globalization” from the same university. She works as a
litigating attorney at Women’s Link in trafficking in persons, intersectional
discrimination and sexual and reproductive rights.