Print Commission on the Status of Women
Resolution on the follow-up of the fourth world conference on women: implementation of strategic objectives and action in the critical areas of concern
source: United Nations Commission on the Status of Women
Report on the forty-second session, 2-13 March 1998
E/CN.6/1998/12
Economic and Social Council, Official Records, 1998.,Supplement No. 7
United Nations New York, 1998;
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Violence against women
The Commission on the Status of Women
Reaffirms the Beijing Platform for Action, notably chapter IV.D on violence against women, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women,
Requests States parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women to take into account in their initial and periodic reports to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, general recommendation 19 on violence against women, adopted by the Committee at its eleventh session, and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women,
Requests States parties to international human rights treaties to compile information and report on the extent and manifestations of violence against women, including domestic violence and harmful traditional practices, and the measures taken to eliminate such violence, for inclusion in reports under the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and to include such information in reports to other treaty bodies,
Proposes, in order to accelerate the implementation of the strategic objectives of chapter IV.D:
A. An integrated, holistic approach
Actions to be taken by Governments and the international community:
Formulate comprehensive and multidisciplinary and coordinated national plans, programmes or strategies, which will be widely disseminated, to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls and provide for targets, timetables for implementation and effective domestic enforcement procedures by monitoring mechanisms, involving all parties concerned, including consultations with women's organizations;
Call upon the international community to condemn and act against all forms and manifestations of terrorism, in particular those that affect women and children;
Develop strong and effective national, regional and international cooperation to prevent and eliminate trafficking in women and girls, especially for purposes of economic and sexual exploitation, including the exploitation of prostitution of women and girls;
Encourage the media to take measures against the projection of images of violence against women and children;
Strengthen effective partnerships with non-governmental organizations and all relevant agencies to promote an integrated and holistic approach to the elimination of violence against women and girls;
Integrate effective actions to end violence against women into all areas of public and private life, as a means of working to overcome the violence and discrimination that women face because of such factors as race, language, ethnicity, poverty, culture, religion, age, disability and socio-economic class or because they are indigenous people, migrants, including women migrant workers, displaced women or refugees;
Ensure that comprehensive programmes for the rehabilitation of victims of rape are integrated into global programmes.
B. Provision of resources to combat violence against all women
Actions to be taken by Governments, non-governmental organizations and the public and private sector, as appropriate:
Support the work of non-governmental organizations in their activities to prevent, combat and eliminate violence against women;
Provide adequate resources for women's groups, helplines, crisis centres and other support services, including credit, medical, psychological and other counselling services, as well as focus on vocational skill training for women victims of violence that enables them to find a means of subsistence;
Provide resources for the strengthening of legal mechanisms for prosecuting those who commit acts of violence against women and girls, and for the rehabilitation of victims;
Support and encourage partnerships for the establishment of national networks and provide resources for shelters and relief support for women and girls, so as to offer a safe, sensitive and integrated response to women victims of violence, including the provision of programmes designed to heal victims of trafficking and rehabilitate them into society;
Consider increasing contributions for national, regional and international action to combat violence against women, including for the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women, its causes and consequences and the Trust Fund in Support of Action to Eliminate Violence against Women of the United Nations Development Fund for Women;
Develop special programmes that would assist women and girls with disabilities in recognizing and reporting acts of violence, including the provision of accessible support services for their protection and safety;
Encourage and fund the training of personnel in the administration of justice, law enforcement agencies, security, social and health-care services, schools and migration authorities on matters related to gender-based violence, and its prevention, and the protection of women from violence;
Include in national budgets adequate resources related to the elimination of violence against women and girls.
C. Creation of linkages and cooperation with regard to particular forms of violence against women
Actions to be taken by Governments:
Consider, where appropriate, formulating bilateral, subregional and regional agreements to promote and protect the rights of migrant workers, especially women and girls;
Develop bilateral, subregional, regional and international agreements and protocols to combat all forms of trafficking in women and girls, and assist victims of violence resulting from prostitution and trafficking;
Improve international information exchange on trafficking in women and girls by recommending the setting up of a data-collection centre within Interpol, regional law enforcement agencies and national police forces, as appropriate;
Strengthen the implementation of all relevant human rights instruments in order to eliminate organized and other forms of trafficking in women and girls, including trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and of pornography;
Strengthen gender focal points of the regional commissions, and further enhance their contributions to gender-balanced development policies, as they have already made significant contributions by helping member States to build capacities and as regards gender-mainstreaming for alleviating gender-based violence against women, and have contributed actively to promoting the human rights of women.
D. Legal measures
Actions to be taken by Governments:
Ensure the gender-sensitive development of an integrated framework that includes criminal, civil, evidentiary and procedural provisions and that addresses sufficiently the multiple forms of violence against women;
Take all appropriate measures to develop an integrated and comprehensive legislative framework that addresses sufficiently the multiple forms of violence against women;
Promote, where necessary, the harmonization of local legislation that penalizes acts of violence against women;
Provide adequate infrastructure and support services to respond to the needs of the survivors of violence against women and girls, and to assist towards full recovery and reintegration into society, such as witness protection programmes, restraining order against perpetrators, crisis centres, telephone hotlines, shelters, provisions for economic support and livelihood assistance;
Develop guidelines to ensure appropriate police and prosecutorial responses in cases of violence against women;
Establish and support programmes that provide legal aid and assistance for women and girls bringing complaints relating to gender-based violence through various applicable ways and means, such as non-governmental organization support for women with claims relating to violence against women;
Ensure the accountability of relevant law enforcement agencies for implementation of policies to protect women from gender-based violence;
Investigate, and in accordance with national legislation, punish all acts of violence against women and girls, including those perpetrated by public officials;
Implement strategies and practical measures, taking account of the Model Strategies and Practical Measures on the Elimination of Violence against Women in the Field of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice adopted by the General Assembly, in its resolution 52/86 of 12 December 1997, and contained in the annex thereto;
Review national legislation in order to effect complete legal prohibition of rape and all forms of violence against women and girls, such as domestic violence, including rape, and to ensure that legislation that protects women and girls from violence is effectively implemented;
Criminalize all forms of trafficking in women and girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation and penalize all traffickers;
Take steps to enable women who are victims of trafficking to make complaints to the police and to be available when required by the criminal justice system, and ensure that during this time women have access to social, medical, financial and legal assistance, and protection, as appropriate;
Develop and implement national legislation and policies prohibiting harmful customary or traditional practices that are violations of women's and girls' human rights and obstacles to the full enjoyment by women and girls of their human rights and fundamental freedoms;
Ensure that women are safe at work by supporting measures that promote the creation of a workplace environment free from sexual harassment or other violence and encourage all employers to put in place policies designed to eliminate and deal effectively with harassment of women whenever it occurs in the workplace;
Encourage the participation of women in law enforcement agencies so as to achieve gender balance.
E. Research and gender-disaggregated data collection
Actions to be taken by Governments:
Promote coordinated research on violence against women to ensure that it is multidisciplinary and addresses the root factors, including external factors, that encourage trafficking in women and girls for prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation;
Encourage research aimed at exploring the nature, extent and causes of violence and collect data and statistics on its economic and social costs, and its consequences, and conduct research on the impact of all laws relevant to combating all forms of violence against women;
Develop common definitions and guidelines and train relevant actors for the collection of data and statistics on violence against women and ensure that all cases of violence against women are recorded systematically and appropriately, whether they are first reported to the police or to health and social services;
Sponsor community-based research and national surveys, including the collection of disaggregated data, on violence against women, with regard to particular groups of women, such as women with disabilities, migrant women workers and trafficked women;
Support evaluations of the impact of measures and policies, particularly with regard to legislative, evidentiary and procedural law reform, to address violence against women with a view to identifying and exchanging good practices and lessons learned, and initiate intervention and prevention programmes;
Promote the sharing of research results, including information on best practices at national, regional and international levels;
Explore the possibility of mechanisms such as national rapporteurs, who report to Governments on the scale, prevention and combating of violence against women, particularly trafficking in women and girls.
Action to be taken by the United Nations:
Consider ways to share good practices and lessons learned, including establishing a readily accessible database of good practices and lessons learned with regard to all forms of violence against women.
F. Change attitudes
Actions to be taken by Governments and civil society, including non-governmental organizations:
Work to create violence-free societies by implementing participatory educational programmes on human rights, conflict resolution and gender equality, for women and men of all ages, beginning with girls and boys;
Support programmes of peer mediation and conflict resolution for schoolchildren and special training for teachers to equip them to encourage cooperation and respect for diversity and gender;
Encourage innovative education and training in schools to enhance awareness of gender-based violence by promoting non-violent conflict resolution, and short- and mid- and long-term strategic educational goals for achieving gender equality;
Introduce and invest in comprehensive public awareness campaigns, such as "zero tolerance", that portray violence against women as unacceptable;
Encourage the promotion in media portrayals of positive images of women and of men, presenting them as cooperative and full partners in the upbringing of their children, and discourage the media from presenting negative images of women and girls;
Encourage the media to create positive images of women and men as cooperative and crucial actors in preventing violence against women through the development of voluntary international media codes of conduct, on positive images, portrayals and representations of women, and on the coverage of the reporting of violence against women;
Raise awareness and mobilize public opinion to eliminate female genital mutilation and other harmful traditional, cultural or customary practices that violate the human rights of women and girls and negatively affect their health;
Promote the responsible use of new information technologies, in particular the Internet, including the encouraging of steps to prevent the use of these technologies for discrimination and violence against women, and for trafficking in women for the purposes of sexual exploitation, including the exploitation of prostitution of women and girls;
Create policies and programmes to encourage behavioural change in perpetrators of violence against women, including rape, and monitor and assess the impact and effect of such programmes;
Establish legal literacy programmes to make women aware of their rights and the methods of seeking protection under the law;
Recognize that women and girls with disabilities, women migrants and refugee women and girls could be particularly affected by violence, and encourage the development of programmes for their support;
Encourage campaigns aimed at clarifying opportunities, limitations and rights in the event of migration so as to enable women to make informed decisions and to prevent them from becoming victims of trafficking;
Encourage and support men's own initiatives to complement efforts of women's organizations to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls;
Conduct research on, and create policies and programmes to change, the attitudes and behaviour of perpetrators of violence against women within family and society;
Actively encourage, support and implement measures aimed at increasing the knowledge and understanding of violence against women, through gender analysis capacity-building and gender-sensitive training for law enforcement officers, police personnel, the judiciary, medical and social workers, and teachers.
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D. Matters brought to the attention of the Council
4. The following resolutions and decision adopted by the commission are brought to the attention of the Council:
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Annex I
SUMMARIES OF THE PANEL DISCUSSIONS ON THE CRITICAL AREAS OF CONCERN
C. Violence against women: Moderator's summary
23. At the 8th meeting, on 5 March 1998, the Commission held a panel discussion on violence against women, one of the critical areas of concern in the Platform for Action. Presentations were made by the panellists: Barbara Prammer (Austria), Federal Minister for Women's Affairs and Consumer Protection; Bonnie Campbell (United States of America), Head of Violence against Women, Office of the Justice Department; Maria Lisbeth Guevara (Venezuela), Coordinadora de la Comisión de Legislación, Consejo Nacional de la Mujer; and Radhika Coomaraswamy (Sri Lanka), Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women.
24. Participants in the panel discussion and the dialogue recalled that the Beijing Platform for Action had identified violence against women as a priority concern of the international community and had defined it, in line with the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (General Assembly resolution 48/104), as an act of gender-based violence occurring in public or private life. The Platform for Action emphasized the need to take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women and to study the causes and consequences of violence and the effectiveness of preventive measures.
25. Participants emphasized that violence and fear of violence in public and private life remained one of the main concerns of women worldwide. Violence continued to be an obstacle to the achievement of equality, development and peace, since it had a direct impact on women's economic, social and political participation. Thus, violence against women in all its forms constituted a flagrant violation of women's human rights, which could only be tackled through a multidisciplinary and coordinated approach.
26. Gender-based violence which resulted in or was likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women affected the corporal integrity of women. It was emphasized that the elimination of violence against women was therefore linked to other human rights guarantees, including the right to life, freedom from torture, detention and arbitrary arrest, and the Geneva Conventions.
27. All forms of gender-based violence against women had a devastating effect on women and their families, in particular their children, and brought with it the risk of a continuous cycle of violence between generations, focused on groups of women, including women with disabilities, migrant women and women in prostitution.
28. It was noted that trafficking in women had become an integral feature of transnational organized crime. International cooperation was needed to address the issue of trafficking and to punish those involved in organizing and profiting from it. In several instances, regional cooperation in that regard had started, and national task forces had been established. It was underlined that the problem of trafficking should be dealt with along the lines set out by the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which had not yet been ratified by all countries.
29. Recently, many Governments had given the elimination of violence against women top priority, as reflected in the many national action plans established in the follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women. In addition, several countries had elaborated specific action plans to combat gender-based violence, involving non-governmental organizations. At the international level, activities carried out by existing mechanisms, including the Commission on the Status of Women, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, the Commission on Human Rights and reports of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women, were praised.
30. Mention was made of good practices in the fields of appropriate assistance, management and communication, and prevention, investigation and prosecution, which involved social, educational, medical, judicial, law enforcement, and migration authorities as well as non-governmental organizations. There was consensus that legal action and reform of the criminal and civil justice systems were critical. It was essential that perpetrators be confronted with the consequences of their behaviour and held accountable. It was noted that some countries had introduced legislation that made it possible to remove the violent offenders from the family home, instead of accommodating victims and children in shelters.
31. Gender training for law enforcement officers and other personnel, relevant governmental agents and officials was considered important in order to sensitize the criminal justice system regarding violence against women. In some countries, special examination kits were provided to the police for collecting forensic evidence from women. It was emphasized that the full participation of women in the development and execution of laws was required and that there was need for more gender-sensitive women police officers, prosecutors and judges. Training of health and social workers, teachers and counsellors was also necessary in order to ensure that they would be able to identify crimes of violence committed against women and girls. Effective partnership between the police and non-governmental organizations working on violence was considered crucial.
32. Various steps had been taken to make women aware of the existing problem, to ensure their safety and to give assistance. Shelters and emergency helplines, which provided support and protection to victims, existed in many countries. Greater restrictions on access to weapons was being considered in some countries. Witness protection schemes using protective court orders had been introduced and were necessary for protecting, in particular, female victims of trafficking and rape during war. Multidisciplinary teams made up of medical doctors, social workers, psychologists, health workers, teachers, volunteers and non-governmental organizations were providing legal assistance and social services. The valuable assistance given by non-governmental organizations in providing legal and psychological counselling was acknowledged.
33. To raise public awareness and to break the silence and taboos surrounding violence, public awareness campaigns on the impact of violence were considered essential. Many community education campaigns were being carried out, aimed at changing community attitudes towards violence, introducing "zero tolerance" for violent behaviour, and promoting non-violent methods of conflict resolution. Teacher training and the development of curriculum material to address gender-based violence in schools were mentioned. Media campaigns could encourage women to file complaints instead of hiding the problem. At the same time, the portrayal of violence in the media perpetuated violence and continued to have negative effects, especially on children.
34. Many obstacles remained, and the gap between de jure and de facto implementation persisted, since most women seemed not to seek help from crisis services or the police, because of ignorance, fear or shame. Many women were not aware of existing laws or their rights and frequently had no access to the judicial system, especially if they were poor, illiterate or migrants. It was deplored that the real extent of violence against women remained hidden as well as unreported. Random surveys suggested that the extent of the problem was much greater than estimated. Consequently, it was difficult to design adequate policies and offer sufficient services to victims. The lack or inadequacy of data available made it difficult to assess the nature, severity and effects of violence against women and to better understand its causes. The academic community needed to conduct more research on the causes and consequences of violence against women and on the economic costs that accrued to countries because of such violence. It was regretted that there were so few impact studies on steps taken to combat violence against women.
35. With regard to the rehabilitation of perpetrators, programmes had been carried out in a number of countries, with varied success. Most programmes focused on the role of men, emphasizing positive new role models for men and new types of male/female relationships in the family. It was important to change patriarchal values and to create a non-violent culture. However, in view of the scarcity of funds, assistance to victims of violence had to be the priority and needed to be seen as a moral obligation.
36. Participants also recalled the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and stressed the need for concrete follow-up, including studies on the impact of measures to eliminate violence against women and to assist the victims, and it was proposed that mechanisms were needed to monitor follow-up on violence against women, including good practices.