U.S. SENATE TESTIMONY: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IS A HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS
Testimony Submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Submitted by Amnesty International, The Carter Center, Human Rights Watch and The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights
This testimony focuses on the international human rights framework that exists to address these abuses, and offers recommendations on actions the United States Government can take to do so. Amnesty International‘s five-year campaign to Stop Violence Against Women around the world has produced dozens of reports documenting these abuses; offered detailed recommendations for action by governments, non-state actors, and international organizations, and clearly illustrated the connection of this violence to violations of human rights around the world. Its two most recent reports were published this week, focusing on violations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chad.
Violence against women takes many forms, including rape, female genital mutilation/cutting, domestic violence, and honor killings, to name a few. It is a global health crisis, and global moral outrage that exacerbates instability and insecurity around the world. Over the last 20 years, violence against women has increasingly been understood and accepted as a human rights issue. Whereas violence was previously dismissed as an unpreventable consequence of war, cultural norm, or simply a private matter, the international community has acknowledged that women and girls often are targets of abuse because of their gender – whether in conflict where rape is a weapon of war, in communities and schools, or in the home where violence occurs within the family. These crimes are now recognized as human rights abuses that governments must prevent, prohibit and punish. Our coalition has recommended five U.S. policy initiatives, including passage of I-VAWA, U.S. promotion of legal protections, and U.S. ratification of the Treaty for the Rights of Women, officially known as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). We see progress on two recommendations – U.S. leadership in the United Nations Security Council to strengthen the UN‘s response to rape and sexual violence, and creation of a strong UN women‘s entity. But much work remains to be done. Every day, women and girls around the world are threatened, beaten, raped, mutilated, and killed with impunity. Worldwide, at least one in every three women – nearly one billion women – will be beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime, whether at the hands of family members, government security forces, or armed rebels.
Today, what unites women internationally-transcending class, race, culture, religion, nationality and ethnic origin-is their vulnerability to the denial and violation of their fundamental human rights, and their dedicated efforts to claim those rights.
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