Vienna +10: Speak Out
E-Consultation Survey Results

Violence Against Women: How does using the concept of human rights affect your work on violence against women?

Uses of the Concept

• Gives the necessity to improve my knowledge to adapt myself to the situation : to know how to listen, to convince people to go to the police is new 2)necessity to produce new materials 3) the issue of the security of the women activists working on this issue. Their are taking the responsibility of "opening the eyes of the women when they succeed in sensitising them "
• All of our programs are rights-based and we promote very strongly with other NGOs to take up this approach. We feel it is empowering for women, action-demanding and compelling to most people - whether men, women, youth, children, professionals or non-professionals, it also helps people feel linked with something larger than themselves and legitimizes the work for hard to convince groups.
• WE USE ILLUSTRATION AND PERSUASION FROM FELLOW SPOUSE AND COMMUNITY
• Being free of violence is a basic constitutional right in South Africa, and international law institutionalizes women's rights to be free of violence specifically based on their gender. I deal with local, African and international legislation and principles in my work on VAW/GBV and beyond.
• broadens the scope, blurs the gender excuses
• Completely dominates our work
• Educating our community with information we receive from the UN; we still use Beijing + as basis for our work; and that women's rights are human rights; that women have a right to live a life free of violence; a basic human right.
• Enhances it, does not get into specific religious beliefs which might be offensive to some.
• Explanation about human rights, changing of consciousness, strengthening of female migrants resisting power
• gives it more credibility
• Guide intervention actions, allocation of resources and services, prioritize policy adovacy and decision-making functions
• Hacemos una reflexion accion participativa desde el concepto de los derechos humanos y articulamos la violencia contra la mujer en todos los aspectos
• Hadassah with partners monitors both legislation and cases and becomes involved in both when the issue of violence against women arises.
• Helps women obtain legal abortions in some cases; helps get service providers to support legal abortion in cases of rape and incest; helps link abortion care to other areas of reproductive health
• Historically, women's emotional, psychological, & cognitive responses to ordeals of violence have been labeled as mental illness versus normal responses to human rights violations. My colleague and I have had to challenge the medical mental illness model that re-victimizes women by giving them mental illness labels. Such labels are a plague as these follow women wherever they go; negatively interfering with their desirability as an employee, volunteering, or is used against them in the court system. When we challenge it means our work load increases greatly as we have complex letters to write, for example, challenging insurance companies to accept that a woman's need for assistance; disability insurance is related to being a victim of violence which is a human rights issue not a mental illness. And, specifically, for insurance companies to accept that RAT victimization leads to responses that are NORMAL for any person who endures such atrocities and that these responses are not mental illness. We were successful at several levels with national and private insurance.
• Shift to connectionsHuman rights are used to affirm the right of women, as well as of every human being, to self determination in respect of others, and to build a rights base for all development programs addressing women's issues, not only GBV, but also development issues, economic rights, sexual and reproductive rights.
• Human Rights concepts are the very instruments we use in the mission of our coalition to work in partnership with the UN and its specialized agencies to make sure that governments respect their commitments in international conferences and when ratifying conventions or adopting principles. We act as watchdogs and advocates within the UN - We facilitate participation and public hearings to denounce VAW and violations of women's rights. We advocate through oral and written statements in the UN.
• I show that violence against women is a violation of human right . For example I use the provision of Declaration of human right, the articles of the African Charter of human right, the 1948's Declaration of Human right, all important text about the respect of Human dignity.
• I use it in my activity for political equality for women demanding the right of equal representation for women. I also refer to rights of women for basic services that will allow them to work, not only part time, while the children are being cared for.
• In empowerment activities.
• Initially men find it difficult to accept that the men and women are equal under the laws of the country. They base their arguments on religious interpretations. After some time with sensitization and education, they give in slowly.
• Int'l human rights raise awareness about violence and help promote solutions
• It becomes more radical, clear.
• It benefit our work because human rights is the framework to present international denounces and cases to international mechanisms
• It changes the context of the discourse from "service to victims---charity" to "justice and empowerment"
• It creates a coherent context for trying to ensure that women are not completely invisible or alternatively essentialist ideas about women to be manipulated within contested spaces re role of women in communities affected by conflict.
• it elevates the standard of the issue, one is guided by the UDRH. one can criminalize the issue and demand redress.
• IT ENABLES US TO FOCUS ON ISSUES OF INTEGRITY AND DIGNITY AND INISTS THAT INTERVENTIONS AND SOLUTIONS ARE BASED ON THE CHOICE OF THE AFFECTED PERSON (VICTIM/SURVIVOR)
• It enhances the work of the organisation and assists in getting people to understand the severity of the issue.
• It has been positive as young girls and women learn and assert their rights and take informed decisions that are beneficial to them
• It helps to identify the responsibilities and rights of the people
• it helps to reframe and refocus questions of responsibility and accountability -- at individual and collective levels
• It helps with policy drafting and awareness creation
• It is an integral and essential part of our work. We plan to use such language more as time goes on - here in the US, it is a new concept. Although the Bush administration is being vocal right now about the slavery of Black citizens in the past, they do not acknowledge that such slavery is being perpetrated by individuals and groups now. This will eventually change - as long as we have life and breath.
• It is fundamental to our work on violence against women.
• It makes the public understand how important these issues are
• It provides a framework for advocating for the recognition of VAW as a violation/crime and for the appropriate measures for redress by State and private actors.
• It supports the work giving it more strengths
• It's an inherent part of how we design and prioritize programs.
• Justifies intervention and need for change in male dominated society
• number of women eager to participate in trainings increases
• Our work becomes more professional and people trust us as advocates of women's rights
• Portrays problem as extremely serious. Holds U.S. to same international standards as other countries. Helps inspire activism on the part of advocates.
• Situations, cases, experiences through sharing are better appreciated because the concept of human rights are concretize. It encourages participation and openness. It actually generates the necessary emotion to mobilize the women themselves but at the same time raise the level of agitation very high.
• That the humanity and dignity of women should be inviolable underpins all our thinking, writing, research, advocacy and publications.
• The human rights framework in addressing violence is more empowering as it enables the survivors to demand for their rights from governments who have a responsibility to protect the communities from conflict
• The basic concept of equality plays an active role in elimination of discrimination against women. In our Society the religious fanatics quote religion for justifying discrimination against women.
• The concept of human rights is the key and home base for me to protect persons dignity and women's autonomy. Personal dignity, reason of existence and pride are all based on their human rights idea and concept. It is the first reason of our existence as human-being and womyn-being.
• The concept of human rights provides an underlying principle and a useful tool in our work. The principles of human rights help us further refine our work and address arguments of cultural relativism. We use a human rights approach in our work by trying to hold states accountable through UN Mechanism; spreading awareness about human rights and assisting women claim these rights.
• The concept of physical safety and the right to not be sexually exploited, as basic human rights are extremely important in working to end violence against women and children.
  
• The Human rights framework overall makes it easier to explain the various ways people could be violated.
• Training and workshop for awareness effect violence against women
• Using the concept of human rights for violence against women opens up the argumentation that violence against women is no more a domestic matter of the state but becomes a matter of international law. The state can be held accountable by the international community for acts of violence perpetrated by itself by means of its legislation, jurisdiction and administration (e.g. laws discriminating against women, human rights violations by police officers or other civil servants). Moreover, the state under the concept of human rights can be held accountable for human rights violations perpetrated by non-state actors, if the state has omitted to apply due diligence to prevent, investigate, punish non-state actors and does not take care of adequate compensation for the victim.
• Using the concept of human rights helps the participants in our programs and the readers of our publications to demand for the protection and respect for the human rights that are usually violated in armed conflict situations, as well as demanding for specific redress. Human rights is an empowering framework.
• Very important when working with reporters -- most of whom understand the concept.
• we are compelled to critically examine the limits of law especially with regards to State accountability for violations that take place in the private sphere -we are able to look beyond the victim-centered approach that tends to characterize the work on VAW
• We do not just view VAW as a crime; we go further to claim reparations for violation of human rights. Even where the authorities put it away in the private realm, the human rights framework comes in.
• We only work on violence against women within a human rights framework. We only do advocacy, not service delivery
• We refer to human rights in all areas of our work as an international standard with undisputed authority
• We work to create legal standards that guarantee women autonomy over their bodies, including, of course, their right to be free from all forms of violence.
• We work with many groups who are actively seeking to hold governments accountable for violence perpetrated by state and non-state actors.
• When we are talking about human right, women wonder if they are included within. The using of this term permit to us to discuss and to explain the gender
• With its conceptual acceptance in many official documents nationally and internationally, it is something that governments and violators of HR could be held accountable.
• Women find it easier to relate to and speak out about violence when they can see this as part of the human rights framework rather than an individual incident transitioning from a helpless victim to a survivor of abuse. Justice and injustice (inherent to human rights) are very strong and emotive concepts.
• Women get aware of being not just an asset to a man but a human being for whose rights somebody fights.
• Women see that they have rights not only as a human being but just for being a woman which is very positive and it makes them feel important, not to mention since they have been battered for being a woman
• the right to self-determination in reproductive matters has been recognized in Switzerland (referendum June 2nd 2002: abortion on request adopted by 72,2% of voters). This right was the main argument in the campaign
• Trafficking in women
• We have many obstacles to address to Cambodian Society such as lack of cooperation from the police, local authorities, and villagers.
• We KNOW this is violence against women, particularly NATIVE WOMEN IN CANADA> it is part of our history and MUST be stopped NOW.
• Women's rights are human's rights

Connecting Rights

• A good case is the privatization of water-- directly undermining the survival of poor people, and impacting women in particular as the cooks and caretakers as well as subsistence farmers. Rising costs and lack of access contribute to poor health and nutrition, and increased labor for women. It is encouraging that the UN Committee on ESCR named water as a human right this year, thus challenging IMF/WB/WTO policies that directly undermine this right, critical to women's survival. We consider the denial of water and resulting health deterioration a form of violence against women. Using the rights system is an important way of beginning to challenge it.
• A human rights approach enables a wider and clearer definition of violence against women and methods to combat it.
• As they have right to marry but the our custom and culture do not accept that intercaste marriage
• As violation of women's rights is violation of human rights especially when dealing with domestic violence. Violation of right to privacy, right to be free from all forms of violence and other rights as stated in the South African constitution.
• enables us to speak about it in broader context and to an audience that respects human rights, but not be as attuned to feminist issues/analysis
• I already explain that we convince women to claim for rights as humans person beings and as women, in order to prevent HIV risk
• In framing the issues and advocating policies
• It affects our work positively as it forms the basis for our advocacy on the need for reforms or new laws where necessary e.g. CEDAW, UDHR
• it assists others in seeing the seriousness of VAW, makes it local, as opposed to something that happens in a "third-world country"
• It helps to educate the professional community about the sociopolitical context of VAW
• It is one of the approaches that grounds our work theoretically.
• It is the very basis of our advocacy for women's rights. It is the civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights of women as human beings that are violated that informs our cause. It helps us hold the government accountable also because it has signed and ratified the international human rights instruments. It is helping in the advocacy and lobbying for the Domestic Violence Bill to be passed into Law
• It shows that abusing human rights and violence against women are intimately related. In the case of indigenous peoples, the disintegration of communities by the destruction of their ancestral lands, a foreign education and value system have all contributed to tensions within the families and resulted in alcohol abuse and violence against women and children. Also, it is very empowering for women to know that they have the same human rights as men and have a right not to be abused by them.
• it takes it from the local to the global level and unites women in solidarity with their sisters and brothers) everywhere
• Promoting and protection the right to adequate housing for women can make women less vulnerable to violence.
• Provides a basis of integrating the issue in the broader social context and also helps to raise gender awareness
• Provides a more holistic analysis that connects the dots between physical and interpersonal violence and structural and institutionalized violence, such as financial violence (not controlling your own resources), poverty, racism and xenophobia
• Shifts from needs to entitlements, makes clear the global interconnections
• The concept of human rights obliges state to take action to stop violence against women and protect individual right (to life and security) but also clashes with the other rights e.g. community and cultural rights as well as the rights of the child.
• The indivisibility of human rights provides a framework for promoting a broad understanding of the concept of violence and for drawing connections between different forms of violence against women.
• Violence against women as a central mean of oppression in patriarchal society, is the result of a combination of violations to different rights. The interconnection and interdependence of human rights is useful, I think, to underline the very fact that women's very humanity is being neglected when violence against women happens, and that the State and society have a responsibility to eradicate it and deal with its effects on the lives of women who have faced violent situations.
• Violence against women is one of the forms of violation of human rights.
• We consider that women's rights are human rights and violence against women not a domestic or regional issue it's universal .so that we focus on human rights training and all our intervention from human rights perspective.
• Women are made aware of their rights, and helped both legally and economically.

Limitations

• It continues to help underline the gravity of VAW -- but little has happened beyond this rhetorical use of human rights language. E.g. there have been no significant efforts to make use of HR mechanisms/standards in the domestic context in relation to VAW.
• It really has not much effect People are just not listening to grassroots people
• The "Rights based approach" seems to be a widely used little understood term. Mostly with violence in the UK I think the plain truth that it is "wrong" means that a complex explanation of a rights based approach to it (and thereby a violation of a woman's rights) is not used. However, in some countries that approach is useful for educating women that they do not have to tolerate the violence and that that is their right. It can add power to an argument.
• The persistence of violence against women, in all its forms and throughout the whole cycle of life, is a fundamental barrier to enjoyment by women of their fundamental human rights and freedoms and the achievement of equality between women and men. HR framework and instruments can be used to press States for changes as these instruments are legally binding and address women’s rights within economic, social, cultural, political and family life.