Multipronged strategy a must to curb gender-based violence

CELEBRATED Mexican activist Norma Andrade was at the UN Office in Geneva on December 5 to raise awareness about femicide. She knew exactly what it means since her daughter, Lilia Alejandra, was murdered in that city in 2001. “A woman is just disposable,” Andrade said. Her pithy comment reflects the reality of the new global scourge — femicide — that has afflicted societies around the world.

An estimated 2,526 women were murdered and hundreds disappeared in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez from 1993 to 2023. In many societies, an absence of community rootedness dehumanises people, who tacitly accept femicide as the new normal. Moreover, laxity in policing, the collapse of governance structures, the complicated maze of the justice delivery system and a lack of sensitivity lead to impunity for the perpetrators.

The term ‘femicide’ is used to refer to all types of gender-related killings of women and girls (also known as ‘femicide/feminicide’). Cases are monitored by the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) and UN Women. Home has become the “most dangerous place for women and girls”. As per the 2024 UNODC report, as compared to 11.8 per cent killings of men, 60.2 per cent women were killed by their close partners or other family members.

The UNODC report says that about 51,100 women and girls were killed in 2023 at home by their partners or other family members (48,800 in 2022) out of the total 85,000 killings of females (89,000 in 2022). Thus, femicides account for 60 per cent of all female killings globally. In other words, an average of 140 women and girls worldwide lose their lives every day at the hands of their partner or a close relative.

Gender-based violence remains a global challenge. Gender-related killings of women are “most brutal and extreme manifestation of violence against women and girls”, UN Women said on November 25, 2024. Femicide differs from other forms of homicides since there is an explicit intention to kill a female solely on the basis of her gender. In order to eliminate the root cause of femicide, the regulatory processes could trace the genesis and symptoms at home, at workplaces, schools or public spaces, including intimate partner violence, sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence, harmful practices and trafficking.

Femicide transcends borders, socio-economic status and cultures. Its severity varies from region to region and country to country. Africa had the highest toll (21,700) of family-related killings of women in 2023, followed by Asia (18,500), Americas (8,300), Europe (2,300) and Oceania (300). In Europe and Americas, 64 per cent and 58 per cent of the victims were killed, respectively, by their close partners.

Women in Africa and Asia are more likely to be killed by family members than by their partners. It calls for an end to the culture of impunity and holding the perpetrators accountable amidst challenges of non-reporting of killings and the collapse of the justice delivery mechanisms in fractured societies.

There have been organised efforts as well as framing of instruments and structures to emphasise that “a woman is as much human as a man”. In the post-UN Charter (1945) era, the first breakthrough came with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on December 10, 1948. A feisty Indian woman delegate, Hansa Mehta, is credited with getting the word ‘men’ replaced by ‘human beings’ during the drafting process.

The UDHR emphatically declares: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (Article 1) to provide normative equality between men and women. However, it took 30 more years to address the issue of discrimination against women when the UNGA adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) through its resolution dated December 18, 1979.

In defining discrimination against women, CEDAW has identified “any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex”. Still, CEDAW refrained from addressing the challenge of violence faced by women. So, it was sought to be supplemented by the UNGA through resolution 48/104 of December 20, 1993, in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. In defining the phrase “violence against women”, the declaration brought into vogue a new global term, “any act of gender-based violence”. The UNGA Declaration sought to establish an umbilical link with CEDAW. It aimed to fill the gaps in the latter.

In 1999, the UNGA designated November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. At the regional level, the only directly applicable instrument remains the 1994 Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women. With 34 parties, the convention has defined violence against women as “any act or conduct based on gender that causes death or physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, whether in the public or the private sphere”.

Notwithstanding the OAS (Organisation of American States) Convention, there is a rising tide of femicide in the Americas, as shown by 8,300 killings of women and girls in 2023.

Femicide requires a multipronged strategy to attain the aspirational goal of ‘elimination’ of violence against women and girls. A 2022 book, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in International Law, has pointed out that “the control over female sexuality remains central to the social, cultural and State-driven global normative systems”. It has called for de-legitimisation that can help in the elimination of femicide in the foreseeable future.

It is high time the UNGA started negotiations for a global convention on the elimination of sexual and gender-based violence.