7/6 Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences - Indicators on violence against women and State response

GE.08-10447 (E) 120208

UNITED NATIONS

A

General Assembly Distr. GENERAL

A/HRC/7/6 29 January 2008

Original: ENGLISH

HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL Seventh session Agenda item 3

PROMOTION AND PROTECTION OF ALL HUMAN RIGHTS, CIVIL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT

Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Yakin Ertürk

Indicators on violence against women and State response

Summary

The present document is my second thematic report to the Human Rights Council in my capacity as the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council decision 1/102. Chapter II highlights my activities in 2007. Chapter III proposes indicators on violence against women and State response to such violence.

CONTENTS

Paragraphs Page

I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 1 - 2 4

II. ACTIVITIES ........................................................................................ 3 - 18 4

A. Fact-finding missions ................................................................. 3 - 4 4

B. General Assembly ....................................................................... 5 4

C. Regional consultations ................................................................ 6 - 9 5

D. Other meetings ............................................................................ 10 - 15 5

E. Group of Experts on Darfur ........................................................ 16 6

F. Communications and press releases ........................................... 17 - 18 6

III. INDICATORS ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ....................... 19 - 118 6

A. Indicators .................................................................................... 26 - 54 8

B. Indicators for measuring violence against women ..................... 55 - 68 15

C. Indicators for State responses ..................................................... 69 - 115 18

IV. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .............................. 116 - 118 31

Annex: List of States respondents ...................................................................................... 33

I. INTRODUCTION

1. In my capacity as Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, I hereby submit my second report to the Human Rights Council. In Chapter II of the report, I summarize my activities in 2007; in Chapter III, I discuss indicators to measure violence against women and State responses towards ending such violence.1

2. I draw the attention of the Council to the addenda to the present report. Addendum 1 contains summaries of alleged human rights violations related to violence against women, its causes and consequences, which were brought to the attention of Governments concerned, and Government responses. Addendum 2 is a report on my mission to Algeria; addendum 3, on my mission to Ghana, and addendum 4, on that to the Democratic Republic of the Congo; in addendum 5, I discuss indicators on violence against women, upon which the present report is built.2

II. ACTIVITIES

A. Fact-finding missions

3. In 2007, I visited Algeria (21 to 31 January), Ghana (7 to 14 July), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (16 to 27 July) at the invitation of the Governments concerned.

4. I will carry out official missions to Saudi Arabia in February 2008 and later to Tajikistan. I have also made requests to the Governments of Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to visit those countries.

B. General Assembly

5. On 25 October, I addressed the Third Committee of the General Assembly. In addition to informing the Assembly of the findings contained in my 2006 mission reports and my preliminary observations from the country visits I carried out in 2007, I focused on the ways in which culture-based discourses and paradigms are used to deny women equality in the enjoyment of their rights or reduce violence against women to the cultural domain. Today, culture is used as a tool of new forms of oppression of women, whether in its orientalist or occidentalist guise. Such approaches present culture as static, homogeneous and apolitical, overlooking its diverse and ever-changing character. I emphasized that compromising women’s rights is not an option; the challenge before us is to respect our diverse cultures while developing strategies to resist oppressive practices in the name of culture and to uphold universal human rights standards while rejecting ethnocentric rulings. I also called on the Assembly to encourage stronger coordination among all United Nations mechanisms designed to promote the advancement of women.

1 I extend my gratitude to Rights and Democracy for their support through a grant.

2 I thank Professor Liz Kelly, at London Metropolitan University, with the support of

Rebecca Davenport, Lorna Kennedy and Miranda Horvath, for her research on the indicators, as contained in addendum 5.

C. Regional consultations

6. As in past years, I attended regional consultations with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). I am pleased to report that three such consultations were held in 2007.

7. From 11 to 13 January, I attended a European consultation in London, organized by the National Alliance of Women’s Organizations with the European Women’s Lobby. The consultation focused on domestic and sexual violence and the situation of immigrant and refugee women.

8. From 7 to 12 May, I attended a consultation organized by Equitas International Centre for Human Rights Education in Tbilisi, with women from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Violence in times of armed conflict, domestic violence and trafficking were discussed.

9. From 12 to 14 September, I attended an Asia-Pacific consultation, which is organized annually by the Asia Pacific Forum for Women, Law and Development. The consultation was held in Manila, and focused on issues related to globalization and militarization.

D. Other meetings

10. Throughout 2007, I participated in numerous events in Turkey and elsewhere in my capacity as Special Rapporteur, some of which are listed below.

11. From 27 February to 2 March, I attended the fifty-first session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York and participated in a number of events organized by Governments, United Nations entities and NGOs. They included a panel on honour crimes, violence against the girl child, female infanticide, indicators, Human Rights Council reform and a Commission on the Status of Women panel discussion entitled “Elimination of all Forms of Violence against Women: follow-up to the Secretary-General’s in-depth study at the national and international levels”.

12. On 16 and 17 April, I attended the annual board meeting of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva, after which I travelled to Parma, where I spoke at public events, met with local authorities and attended a training session for lawyers on international women’s rights instruments. On 17 and 18 May, I spoke at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York.

13. On 3 July, I attended the meeting of the Global Coalition on Women and HIV/AIDS in Nairobi, which was followed by the International Women’s Summit on HIV and AIDS, organized by the World YWCA and the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS, during which I argued that the struggle with HIV/AIDS was intimately linked to the struggle to eliminate violence against women.

14. From 2 to 4 October, at the invitation of the Renner Institute in Vienna, I had consultations with the President of the Parliament of Austria, various Government officials and NGOs, and attended a public event where I addressed the intersections of culture and violence against women.

15. On 26 November, I participated in the international campaign held in Istanbul to stop killing and stoning women. On 6 and 7 December, I spoke at a Council of Europe conference in Strasbourg on support services for victims of domestic violence. Later that month, for the occasion of the International Human Rights Day, I gave a keynote speech on women’s human rights at the American University in Cairo.

E. Group of Experts on Darfur

16. From April to December 2007 I participated in the Group of Experts on Darfur, established by Human Rights Council resolution 4/8 to ensure the effective follow-up and foster the implementation of resolutions and recommendations on Darfur, as adopted by the Council, the Commission on Human Rights and other United Nations human rights mechanisms. The Group met regularly with the Government of the Sudan and submitted its final report to the Council at its sixth session (A/HRC/6/19).

F. Communications and press releases

17. During the reporting period, I sent 59 communications bringing alleged human rights violations to the attention of Governments and received 33 Government replies to communications. An analysis of these communications, including trends, can be found in addendum 1.

18. In 2007, I issued, jointly with other Special Rapporteurs, press releases on various occasions, including on International Women’s Day on 8 March; on 5 April, on the concern at the arrest of five human rights defenders in Tehran, who had been collecting signatures for a campaign to amend discriminatory laws on women; on 1 May, on renewed hostilities between Ethiopian and Somali forces and insurgent groups in Mogadishu, resulting in death and injuries; on the International Day on the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November; and on Human Rights Day on 10 December.

III. INDICATORS ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

19. Addressing violence against women has been a viable entry point to advance women’s human rights as it has mobilized women worldwide, progressively transformed mainstream human rights paradigm and practice, guided United Nations work and the process around the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and slowly but surely shaped the agenda of States.

20. Building on gains made at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women3 provides the first official definition of the problem and calls upon States to exercise due diligence to prevent violence against women, protect women from violence, prosecute perpetrators and provide compensation to victims. In addition, Governments are asked to promote research, collect data and compile statistics concerning violence against women and encourage research on its causes and consequences.

3 General Assembly resolution 48/104.

21. Evaluating State compliance with these obligations is facilitated where data are gathered systematically, disaggregated into relevant categories and published periodically. However, there is an alarming lack of such data in relation to women and girls.4 Moreover, at the international level, there are no agreed indicators or benchmarks for assessing progress over time.5

22. In my first report to the Commission on Human Rights in 2004, I drew attention to the need to develop indices on measuring violence against women and on State responses to it. That proposal was reflected in paragraph 25 of resolution 2004/46, in which the Commission, bearing in mind the need to develop, with full participation of all Member States, an international consensus on indicators and ways to measure violence against women, called on the Special Rapporteur to recommend proposals for indicators on violence against women and on measures taken by, inter alia, Member States, to eliminate violence against women.6

23. Accordingly, the present report makes such proposals, guided by human rights standards, including those contained in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. It does not claim to resolve long-standing academic debates on how to define and measure forms of violence. Rather, issues and questions that are often neglected are considered and proposals on measuring violence against women and State response are suggested.

24. A limited set of indicators that allow for comparisons between countries is proposed. It is presumed that these will be rooted in more in-depth national research, which will ensure that local contexts are captured and that countries can assess their own progress.

25. Existing studies and reports have been reviewed and consultations with relevant actors undertaken. A questionnaire was sent to Member States requesting information on their efforts in developing indicators.7 A comprehensive research paper, forming the basis for this report, is found in Addendum 5.

4 The World’s Women 2005: Progress in Statistics (United Nations publication,

Sales No. E.05.XVII.7). 5 In 1999, the previous Special Rapporteur on violence against women noted the need to develop

indicators to monitor State responses to violence against women. 6 In its resolution 61/143 (para. 18), the General Assembly further requested the United Nations

Statistical Commission to propose, building on my work, possible indicators on violence against women.

7 Of the 63 responses, 25 are from the European region (5 west, 7 central, 4 east, 4 north

and 3 south), 13 from the Americas (5 North America, 4 Central America, 4 South America), 10 from the Arab region, 9 from Africa and 8 from Asia Pacific. See annex for a list of respondents.

A. Indicators

1. Definition

26. An indicator is “an item of data that summarizes a large amount of information in a single figure, in such a way as to give an indication of change over time”.8 It differs from statistics in that it is usually connected to a norm or benchmark, which in the case of violence against women, is necessary for eliminating it. The role of an indicator is to provide guidance on policy, enable measurement and monitoring of progress and stimulate regular, systematic data collection. Indicators are not, however, substitutes for in-depth research, especially since many rely on extrapolation from more detailed studies. Abstraction and accessibility means that indicators offer relatively little with respect to processes and causalities; gender analysis and social research thus complement indicators and provide explanatory frameworks.

2. Current initiatives

27. There are numerous proposals for violence against women indicators across United Nations agencies, regional bodies, Governments and civil society organizations. While there is no consensus, the general focus has been on measuring intimate partner violence, largely because the international knowledge base is strongest here. Transnational approaches include reviews by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Co-ordination Action on Human Rights Violations9 and two multi-country prevalence studies.10

28. Work is also under way to develop global human rights indicators with efforts to link human rights and development indicators, perhaps best illustrated by the Millennium Development Goals. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has also proposed a helpful typology within the context of human rights indicators, which has been adopted in the present report (however, the term “structural” is replaced by “institutional” to avoid confusion with the more common socio-economic usages of the former):11

• Structural indicators reflect the ratification/adoption of legal instruments and existence of basic institutional mechanisms necessary for the realization of human rights

8 Beck, T. (1999), Using Gender-Sensitive Indicators: A Reference Manual for Governments

and Other Stakeholders. Kent: Commonwealth Secretariat: 7. 9 UNECE Taskforce on Violence against Women (2006), www.cahrv.uni-osnabrueck.de.

10 WHO Multi-country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence; the International

Violence Against Women Survey, HUENİ, Finland (to be published in 2008, Violence against Women: An International Perspective, Johnson, H; Ollus, N. & Nevala, S.). 11

OHCHR, Indicators for Monitoring Compliance with International Human Rights Instruments: Second Expert Consultation Conclusions and Recommendations, 2006.

• Process indicators refer to policy instruments, programmes and specific interventions; actions taken by States and individuals to protect and fulfil rights

• Outcome indicators, directly or by proxy measures, document the realization of rights. These are often the slowest to move, due to the interdependence of human rights

29. In the present report, the measurement of violence against women is an outcome indicator, while structural (institutional) and process indicators cover State responses.

3. Why indicators?

30. Establishing violence against women indicators is a human rights obligation, linked to both human rights jurisprudence and the due diligence principle,12 which calls upon States, among other things, to ensure that interventions designed to combat violence are based on accurate empirical data. This necessitates not just the compilation of accurate information, but also of indicators that make the data accessible for non-specialist decision makers and allow for public scrutiny of interventions.

31. States responding to my questionnaire welcomed the indicators project, expressing strong support for the development of transnational measurements, stating the importance of setting benchmarks; the collection, collation and publication of data; and most importantly, assessing progress by and between States. States called for proposals to address all forms of violence against women, including violence against girls, and that the indicators be methodologically and conceptually sound, meaningful, achievable and more than the lowest common denominator. The question of inconsistent definitions was frequently mentioned, as was the question of capacity and transparent technical guidance. A number invoked culture and tradition as barriers to undertaking research and/or compiling other kinds of data.

32. The adoption by States, at intergovernmental forums, of a common understanding of violence against women and a set of indicators will therefore stimulate and enhance initiatives to standardize data at the national and international levels, inform the general public and mobilize action around the problem.

Standards and challenges

33. To be an indicator, something has to be “measurable” in an accurate and relatively accessible way. While institutional indicators are not difficult in this sense, process and outcome ones are more complex. Not only is it possible to create a yes/no measure of “women’s empowerment” or “sense of safety”, but there are many potential ways of doing so.

12 See my report on the due diligence standard as a tool for the elimination of violence against

women (E/CN.4/2006/61).

34. The acronym SMART has been used to summarize the key attributes of good indicators:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant

• Time-framed

35. OHCHR has developed this into standards for international human rights indicators, which need to be:

• Relevant, valid and reliable

• Simple, timely and few in number

• Based on objective information and data-generating mechanisms • Suitable for temporal and spatial comparison and following relevant international

statistical standards

• Amenable to disaggregation in terms of sex, age and other relevant variables

36. With respect to violence against women, we can add:

• Grounded in human rights commitments and cross-cutting principles

• Based on internationally accepted definitions

• Not open to misinterpretation or generating spurious results

Measuring violence against women

37. States have been called “to develop crime surveys on the nature of violence against women”;13 from the outset, this call was to address the full range of violence against women. However, the Secretary-General’s study notes that, while population-based prevalence studies have been undertaken in over 50 countries - 68 since 1995 - the majority are limited to intimate partner violence. Limiting an outcome indicator on violence against women to intimate partner violence has been justified on the grounds that data are more available and intimate partner violence is the most common form of violence against women. Such an approach not only ignores the standards set in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women; it also may not be accurate, given the under-researching of other forms of violence against women

13 General Assembly resolution 52/86.

and disjunctions between research and policy definitions of intimate partner violence (see below). If we had multiple international studies, covering girl and womanhood, and the contexts of employment and education, we may conclude that sexual harassment is the most common form of violence against women. A recent German prevalence study, for example, found rates for sexual harassment four times greater than for physical or sexual violence from a current partner.14

38. The prevalence survey has emerged as a route to establish more accurate estimates of the scale of violence against women, the extent of which is generally assessed through two different measurements: lifetime prevalence and that for the past 12 months. Presented as a rate, prevalence establishes the proportion of the female population that has experienced violence. The frequently cited headline figures, such as “one in four women have suffered intimate partner violence”, are lifetime prevalence rates. If we are to see falling rates of violence as a result of new policies and interventions, it will be detected through decreasing 12-month prevalence rates. Such rates are more reliable where research samples are as representative of the entire population as possible.

39. Some forms of violence against women are single events; other forms may be recurrent, with their gravity and impact a combination of intrinsic harms and repetition. The amount of violence - variously understood as incidents/frequency/chronicity - is a required layer of measurement for forms of violence which tend to be “courses of conduct”: intimate partner violence, stalking and sexual harassment are the most obvious examples here, but sexual violence/abuse is also often repeated. There has been much less methodological development in measuring sexual violence compared to intimate partner violence and female genital mutilation. Ongoing work will be needed to ensure comparative data since there is no consensus in research or national law about either the boundaries between rape and other forms of sexual violence or what constitutes rape. The latter is variously defined in terms of force, lack of consent, and coercive circumstances, each of which has different implications for the construction of questions and data analysis.

40. Measuring trafficking for sexual exploitation has specific challenges: not only are the practices more hidden, but the international definition is complex, as difficult for researchers to operationalize as for State officials to prove. Methodological innovation is beginning, however, with some questions included in surveys on violence against women15 and studies of irregular migrants.

41. An important development in research on female genital mutilation was the transnational agreement reached on a definition that in turn permitted more accurate documentation and new

14 The study also found higher rates of intimate partner violence for migrant women and higher

rates of all forms of violence against women for prostitutes, prisoners and refugees/asylum-seekers (Hageman-White, 2005: 305). 15

African Child Policy Forum, 2006, Violence Against Girls in Africa: A Retrospective Survey in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.

approaches to estimating prevalence in diasporic communities.16 The World Health Organization (WHO) multi-country study on intimate partner violence contains a series of questions addressing forced, child and early marriage.

42. Prevalence rates for intimate partner violence are calculated from answering “yes” to any one of a list of behaviours: to “count” as a victim, therefore, one needs only to have been pushed, for example, on a single occasion. While accuracy of measurement is important methodologically, and headline figures have undoubtedly raised awareness, it is an open question whether all single incidents should be understood as violence against women under the definition of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. Within the NGO sector, domestic violence has long been understood as a “pattern of coercive control”. Some studies have begun to recognize these complexities and use data analysis to explore more complex patterns. An Irish study17 defined “severe domestic abuse” as a “pattern of physical, emotional or sexual behaviour between partners in an intimate relationship that causes, or risks causing, significant negative consequences”; minor incidents, in contrast, were defined as isolated events with little or no impact. Applying these analyses not only reduced overall prevalence findings but also the spurious finding that men are as likely to be victims of intimate partner violence as women.

43. Specialist surveys that address multiple forms of violence against women ensure that the continuum of violence can be traced with implications for protection, prevention and limiting harm.

Methodological guidelines

44. Bearing in mind the caveats outlined above, it is nonetheless possible to identify consensus positions on good practices in measuring violence against women. Normalization makes asking “have you ever experienced violence/assault?” problematic. Therefore, the wording of questions is something of an art in research. The number, format and content of questions limit or facilitate disclosure. Single questions are less effective than multiple probes, and the most effective are behaviourally specific lists which avoid using terms such as “rape”, “assault” or “violence”.

45. Surveys will produce more accurate and useful findings where the following standards are observed:

• Multiple opportunities to disclose through behaviourally specific questions

• Inclusion of a range of forms of violence against women

16 See A Statistical Study to Estimate the Prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation in England

and Wales (www.forwarduk.org.uk/download/96). 17

Watson, D. & Parsons, S. (2005), Domestic Abuse of Women and Men in Ireland, National Crime Council.

• Surveys constructed to enable analysis across multiple definitions, including recognized international standards

• Both recent (12 months) and lifetime time frames

• Representative and inclusive sampling frames: both sufficient size to make findings reliable and efforts to reach/include vulnerable groups

• Measurements of incidents, frequency and severity, where relevant

• Strong ethical practice

46. Recognized ethical standards for prevalence surveys can be summarized as follows:18

• Interviews conducted in a safe and confidential setting

• Confidentiality protocols, including anonymizing of all stored and published data

• Well-trained female interviewers, with debriefing opportunities

• Careful construction of questions and instruments to take interviewees into and out of explicit discussions of violence

• Access to post-survey support/advice for those who may need it

47. Prevalence surveys should also routinely collect data on:

• Basic demographics

• Relationship to perpetrators

• Life contexts in which violence against women takes place

• Reporting and help-seeking, and barriers to it

• Forms of harm and impact

48. This final category needs to extend from immediate and health-based measures to cover how violence narrows women’s and girls’ enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms in public and private life, including with respect to social inclusion and livelihoods. Both lifetime and 12-month measures are commended: the former ensures that serious violence occurring in childhood and early adulthood, with lifetime consequences, is included; the latter provides a

18 Co-ordination Action on Human Rights Violations, “Perspectives and standards for good

practice in data collection on violence against women”. Paper for Data collection as a prerequisite for effective policies to combat violence against women conference, CoE, Lisbon, 5 July 2007.

route to track trends in reporting (are women, and younger women in particular, more likely to report?), recording (what is the gap between what women say and institutional data?) and the impact of policy changes.

49. Larger representative samples increase both the number of cases detected and the strength of claims to accuracy, especially where accepted standards for random selection are used. The latter are, however, difficult to implement in societies where the tools for selection - census data, voting registration and/or high telephone ownership - are unavailable or inaccurate. While geographic spread across a country is the most preferable, funds, transport and political contexts may make this impossible. Decisions such as that made in the WHO multi-country study to randomly sample in two areas - one urban and one provincial/rural - represent the best possible compromise where resources are limited.

50. How surveys are administered has implications for disclosure. The early orthodoxy was that face-to-face contact, with interviewers matched for sex, age and ethnicity, increased disclosure. Subsequently, other methods have produced high disclosure rates, and confidentiality appears to be as, if not more, important, as rapport.19 Both specialist surveys on violence against women and carefully designed modules in health or crime victimization surveys have proved effective. While surveys raise awareness about violence against women and produce methodological innovation, they are expensive, and no State has yet committed itself to conducting them on a regular basis, which is necessary for indicators. At the same time, modules have drawbacks, especially the danger of progressive reduction across two dimensions of what we currently know to be good practice - multiple questions and covering a range of forms of violence against women.20

51. An example of a module that combines five key outcome and process indicators and addresses trends is the one on female genital mutilation, used in rapid assessment tools (the Demographic and Health Survey and the Multiple-Cluster Indicator Survey) in 14 countries.21

52. The module includes:

• Prevalence of female genital mutilation The key outcome measure, calculated across five-year age bands for women aged 15-49

• Genital mutilation status of all daughters A second outcome measure, tracking recent change, including the current age of daughters, whether and at what age they were cut

19 Walby, S. (2005) “Improving the statistics on violence against women”, Statistical Journal of

the United Nations, UNECE, 22, 4: 193-216. 20

UNECE Task Force on Measurement of Violence Against Women, Analysis of national surveys (ECE/CES/GE.30/2006/6). 21

See www.measuredhs.com/topics/gender/FGC-CD/start.cfm; African Child Policy Forum (2006), Born to High Risk, Violence Against Girls in Africa.

• Percentage of “closed” mutilation (infibulation, sealing) and “open” mutilation (excision) Addressing trends in the forms of genital mutilation for adult women and their daughters

• Performer of female genital mutilation Tracing any movement towards more medicalized procedures

• Support of or opposition to female genital mutilation by women and men aged 15-49 An attitude measure to explore changing norms

53. Additional institutional indicators are measured at the local level. It is the combination of outcome, process and institutional indicators, rooted in current policy processes, that make this a commendable example.

54. To summarize, much prevalence research has addressed a limited range of forms of violence against women, and few surveys have included the full range. Methodology is most developed for intimate partner violence and some forms of violence have been considered less amenable to measurement, especially those termed “harmful traditional practices”. It remains a global and local challenge to ensure that all forms of violence against women are measured, whether in the same instrument or through a series of specific modules.

B . Indicators for measuring violence against women

55. Assessing progress should be based on the internationally recognized goal of eliminating violence against women. To decide from the outset to limit outcome measures to intimate partner violence, as some have proposed, would not only mean that the current imbalance in the knowledge will deepen but also make it impossible to document trends over time for the most fundamental outcome indicator.22

56. Attempting to harmonize multiple proposals for measuring violence against women is not realistic for both discursive and methodological reasons. Even in the multi-country studies, it was impossible to implement surveys in precisely the same way due to variations in available resources and cultural contexts. We need, therefore, a “careful and research-based process of standardization”.18 Do we need comparable surveys, modules, questions or data? While methodologists may wish for all four, international indicators require only comparable data. The post hoc analysis by the network of the Co-ordination Action on Human Rights Violations of five European studies demonstrated that analysis can create comparability. This suggests

22 See Walby, S. (2007), Indicators to measure violence against women, paper for UNECE

expert consultation, www.unece.org/stats/documents/ece/ces/ge.30/2007/mtg1/wp.1.e.pdf.

designing studies to explore a series of definitions, including those for local legal statutes and internationally agreed standards: a direction some prevalence researchers have already endorsed.23 This, in turn, would allow the international community to set a global definition of violence against women, which national prevalence measures will be expected to operationalize.

1. Grave violence against women indicator

57. The key proposal is to reach international agreement on a definition of grave violence against women, which can be applied statistically across a range of survey designs, and be measured across lifetime as the headline figure, and of the past 12 months to track trends, including willingness to report and availability of support, both proxies for improvements in State responses and decreased tolerance/normalization.

58. The indicator for grave violence against women would not include every incident of violence, and as such may raise concerns. It remains the case, however, that an indicator cannot encompass everything, and is not a substitute for qualitative and quantitative research. Such studies are required at the national level in order to calculate the international indicator. The recommendation ensures a wide range of forms of violence against women is included and seeks to circumvent many of the political, legal and technical debates which would otherwise delay progress. As a single composite indicator, it offers potential for integration into other indices, such as the Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure. The advantages of such an indicator are that it:

• Combines measurements of prevalence, frequency and severity

• Ensures that violence used to control women is measured, and that spurious gender symmetry cannot be used to undermine policy advances

• Avoids long-standing and irresolvable political differences on how to define violence against women by seeking a new consensus, while recognizing that wider definitions will continue to be used by States and in academic research

• Limits the impact of divergent rates of underreporting in different contexts, since grave violence is more likely to be revealed

• The 12-month measure will enable documentation in time series, while the lifetime indicator ensures that one-time experiences with lifetime consequences (female genital mutilation, forced/child marriage, rape) are not excluded

23 See Tjaden, P. (2005), Defining and measuring violence against women: Background, issues

and recommendations, Statistical Journal of the United Nations, UNECE, 23 (3-4): 217-224.

59. Although further discussion will be needed to refine this concept, some broad parameters the grave violence against women indicator could cover are:

• Any incident of rape/serious sexual assault/sexual coercion24 in childhood or adulthood, female genital mutilation, child/forced marriage, trafficking and sexual exploitation

• With respect to the course of conduct offences, intimate partner violence, stalking, sexual harassment inclusion would be on the basis of seriousness and/or frequency, building on the analytic definitions developed in the studies conducted in Ireland and Finland25

60. The basic outcome indictors are:

• Proportion of female population who have experienced grave violence in the past 12 months (based on a population survey)

• Proportion of female population who have ever experienced grave violence (based on a population survey)

61. This proposal is made to facilitate progress, and draws on the model we have seen work with respect to female genital mutilation. It was agreement on international definitions which enabled research, policy development and indicators to proceed in a cooperative way.

62. Bearing in mind the availability of data, a system of layered compliance is envisaged. Layer 1 would comprise intimate partner violence, rape and sexual assault and female genital mutilation - the most common current measures. Subsequent layers would add in forms that are less often measured: harmful marriage practices; sexual harassment and stalking; trafficking and sexual exploitation; and sexual abuse of girls.

63. States are expected to move towards increased measurement of all forms of violence against women in order to produce accurate rates of grave violence for international comparison. Whether they do this through regular (five-yearly) specialist surveys or more frequently administered modules is a local decision.

2. Femicide indicator

64. The gravest form of violence against women is murder, which is not captured by prevalence methodology. Homicide data are among the most accurate of criminal justice statistics, though in many countries there are no reliable official statistics. There are a number of

24 This term is used in some national legal codes and makes reference to the International

Criminal Court’s Elements of Crimes (Elements of the Crimes, article 8 (2) (b) (xxii)-1), to be read in relation to the Rome Statute, article 7 - Crimes against humanity - (1) (g) (rape). 25

Watson, D. & Parsons, S. (2005), Domestic Abuse of Women and Men in Ireland, National Crime Council; Piispa, M. (2002), The Complexity of Patterns of Violence Against Women in Heterosexual Partnerships, Violence Against Women, vol. 8, No. 7: 873-900.

forms of murder of women - femicide - that fit the definition in the Secretary-General’s study: murder in the context of intimate partner violence; sexual murder; killings of prostitutes; killings in the name of honour; female infanticide; and dowry deaths. A second proposed international indicator is to create a femicide index, and would require sex disaggregating current homicide data, alongside developing coding for “sex-based” categories.

65. While some initial investment will be needed to develop and apply the new categories, this can rapidly become a routine process providing significant purchase on not only transnational patterns but also local variations. Challenges which will require more thought involve the extent of unidentified maternal deaths and suicides which are attributable to violence against women, and whether the “missing women”, falling sex ratios, constitute a form of violence against women.

66. The second outcome indicator is the trend in female deaths due to femicide (using a national femicide index).

3. Social tolerance indicator

67. If violence against women is to be eliminated, the need to address factors that promote or constrain it becomes critical. Tolerance of such violence creates cultural contexts in which it can continue unabated and States fail to act with due diligence. From a human rights perspective, this is a situation where the violations of rights can continue unchallenged. We need a deeper understanding of the ways in which violence is structured and sustains current gender hierarchies: while women are increasingly willing to name and challenge violence against them, men’s perceptions and actions appear more resistant to change. This requires an emphasis on surveying these matters, either within prevalence surveys if they include male respondents, or through modules developed for inclusion in recurrent social attitude surveys. Questions probing understanding, awareness, levels of tolerance, whether respondents know someone who has been victimized, and willingness to intervene/report are the foundation of such measures.

68. The third outcome indicator is evidence of decreasing tolerance of violence against women (as measured by national surveys and analysed across key demographics).

C. Indicators for State responses

69. Developing indicators on State response to violence against women is somewhat less complex than measuring violence, because there are clear responsibilities set out in international law: to prevent, protect, prosecute and provide compensation. There is also no academic debate on the parameters and approaches involved.

70. The indicators proposed here will allow individual countries to track their own progress over time. They may also give international monitoring mechanisms, such as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, a framework of benchmarks to take into account when considering State responses.

71. The following minimum standards are contained in various human rights documents:

• Ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and other human rights instruments

• Constitutional guarantees of women’s equality and repeal of discriminatory laws

• Plan of action/executive policy on violence against women with a strong evidence base and political will for its implementation, demonstrated by budgetary allocation, timelines and clear paths of responsibility

• An effective legal framework, statute and procedural law that provides access to justice redress, protection and compensation

• Criminalization of all forms of violence against women and the prosecution of its perpetrators

• Increased awareness and sensitivity of professionals and officials

• Resource allocation to ensure provision of support and advocacy services by NGOs, including shelters, helplines, advocacy, counselling and other services

• Awareness-raising and prevention programmes

• Addressing structural inequalities in the promotion of women’s advancement

• Collection, collation and publication of data, including evaluation of policies and basic research programmes

72. The standards span institutional and process measures, and many can be translated into the technical requirements of indicators. They are also interconnected; for example, reform of statute law and policy development are not sufficient; implementation is also critical, as are mechanisms for evaluation and monitoring. Access to remedies requires awareness and training among officials and professionals alongside a strong NGO sector.

73. Process indicators address interventions, illustrating the realization of rights through measures on protection, remedies and prevention. To a great extent, their accuracy is dependent on States ensuring that all reported and identified cases are recorded and can be traced through a tracking system. While not underestimating the challenges involved, there are many examples of States introducing data-collection and management systems which track policy priorities through indicators, and violence against women is no different in this respect. Developed countries have few excuses for not having effective case-tracking systems, or for being able to disaggregate justice system data across sex and forms of violence.

74. These indicators have been developed with the following factors in mind:

• To not overburden States

• To reflect the wider agenda on violence against women

• To link to obligations under international law

• To connect to what we already know about promising practices

75. While an overtaxing set of indicators requiring currently unavailable data would prompt minimal cooperation, setting the bar too low would both unfairly advantage developed countries and present no impetus for change. The proposals are a starting point for developing monitoring and reporting processes, setting minimum standards for fulfilling international rights and obligations. They have been constructed in a layered format, weighting expectations on developed countries which should be able to rapidly move through levels 3 to 5 (indeed they should be there already), and be making progress at levels 1 and 2. Biannual reporting on national indicators would give the violence against women indicators project life outside United Nations mechanisms and be a spur to States to fulfil their due diligence obligations.

1. Institutional indicators

76. While ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women is recorded by various sources, such as the Division for the Advancement of Women and OHCHR, ratification of relevant regional conventions, constitutional guarantees of women’s equality, and whether violence against women falls within an equalities agenda are not. Combining these measures will provide important contextual data on how violence against women is understood and located in State machineries. The Beijing Platform for Action requires that States “take integrated measures to address violence against women”, preferably through an action plan. Whether there is an action plan appears to be relatively simple to assess, but it must also be implemented with determination and linked to the goal to eliminate all forms of violence against women. Many plans currently focus on intimate partner/domestic/family violence and trafficking26 - the areas which have received most attention internationally - with limited infrastructure and resources to ensure implementation. These aspects, therefore, also need to be assessed.

77. For a plan to be effective, it must extend from Government through ministries and down through to the local level. Having coordination bodies and leads or champions in ministries and agencies provides routes for implementation and innovation. Again, most developments here are evident with respect to intimate partner violence, and in some countries trafficking. Rarely are

26 Lovett, J. (2005), Briefing document on strategic approaches to addressing Violence against

Women. Amnesty UK.

these more local activities integrated approaches to violence against women, despite the potentials of saving money and being more effective through a holistic approach.27 These matters should be addressed in national reporting.

78. The Beijing Platform for Action and subsequent documents required that States undertake an audit of their legal framework, taking whatever measures necessary to ensure that all forms of violence are addressed in criminal and civil law. Specific requirements involve ensuring that:

• Rape is a crime against the person rather than against morals, which cannot be erased through marriage

• Domestic and intimate partner violence is criminalized

• Trafficking and sexual exploitation of children are criminalized

• Harmful practices are addressed

79. Reforming legal codes is a first step to ensuring access to justice for women. Process measures are also needed to address reporting, recording, prosecution and procedural fairness.

Proposed indicators

80. These baseline indicators address both minimum standards and the necessity for more nuanced measures. The benchmarks are ratification without reservations of relevant conventions, and the development and implementation of appropriate machinery and oversight. The requirement that measures cover all forms of violence against women recurs throughout.

81. Proposed indicators are:

• Ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women 1. Ratification of the Convention without reservations

2. Ratification of the Optional Protocol

3. Ratification of the Convention with few reservations

4. Ratification of the Convention with significant reservations contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention (i.e. reservations to articles 2 and 16)

5. Still to be ratified

27 End Violence Against Women (2006), Making the Grade? The Second Annual

Independent Analysis of Government Initiatives on Violence Against Women. Available from www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/documents/making_the_grade06.pdf.

• Ratification of relevant regional conventions 1. Ratification of all without reservations

2. Ratification of all with significant reservations

3. Ratification of some without reservations

4. Ratification of some with significant reservations

5. Still to be ratified

• Statutory recognition of non-discrimination and gender equality 1. Ministry with resources to implement an action plan on all forms of violence

against women as a key strategy in gender equality

2. Ministry with resources to implement an action plan on some forms of violence against women

3. Inter-ministerial coordination on violence against women policy, including high-level leads across ministries

4. National women’s machinery to implement policy on gender equality

5. Non-discrimination, gender equality and human rights in national constitution

• Action plan on violence against women

1. Plan has sufficient resources to deliver implementation

2. Plan covers all forms of violence within an explicit gender analysis

3. Plan covers some forms of violence within an explicit gender analysis

4. Plan is monitored by an independent external oversight body with specific violence against women mandate (national observatory, national human rights institution with violence against women mandate)

5. Plan has clear time frames and targets

• All forms of violence against women criminalized and treated as serious offences 1. Sexual harassment and stalking

2. Domestic violence

3. Harmful practices

4. Rape, including marital rape

5. Trafficking for sexual exploitation and domestic servitude

2. Process indicators

Access to justice and reporting 82. A key State obligation is to provide remedies28 and access to justice for victims of human rights violations. In article 4 (c) of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women States are called upon to exercise due diligence to investigate, prosecute and punish acts of violence against women.

83. Procedural justice addresses the ways justice systems operate: that rights can be realized (or denied) through formal processes. For instance, the right to dignity suggests women complaining about violence should be treated as human beings, to be believed and respected. Being treated with respect and empowered with knowledge about one’s rights and obligations restores some of the agency that violence has removed. Recent research in the United States of America29 found that bad practice has a greater impact than good, compounding the harms of victimization. The right to remedy must therefore include guarantees to protect victims’ rights at all steps of the judicial process. The principles of dignity, integrity, privacy and respect also need to be borne in mind with respect to reporting, with provisions for confidentiality and being able to make reports to female staff key basic measures.

84. The traditional discounting of violence against women has meant not only that State agencies have not recorded cases, but that women have not seen themselves as deserving of protection and redress. Reporting of violence to and by State institutions is crucial to ensuring justice for victims and the punishment of its perpetrators. Institutional data, therefore, tell us not about levels of violence, but levels of reporting and standards of recording.

85. Despite policies to increase reporting and prosecution of violence against women, outcomes are not always in the direction intended: in some jurisdictions, reporting has increased significantly, but there has been limited change in prosecution and/or conviction. These patterns have been noted with respect to intimate partner violence and rape/sexual assault, with in the latter case falling conviction rates in many developed countries.30 Attrition - the proportion of cases which fall out of the system before being decided by the court - offers a powerful indicator across a number of dimensions: the reporting rate shows whether women increasingly believe States are effective in addressing violence; the proportion of cases that are prosecuted and which result in convictions measures whether policy changes have had an impact.

28 See General Assembly resolution 60/147.

29 Campbell, R., et. al. (2001), Social reactions to rape victims: Healing and hurtful effects on

psychological and physical health outcomes, Violence & Victims, 16: 287-302. 30

Kelly, L. & Regan, L. (2003), “Rape: Still a forgotten issue” available from www.rcne.com/downloads/RepsPubs/Attritn.pdf; and Kelly, L. & Regan L. (2001), Rape: The Forgotten Issue? A European Research and Networking Project, Child and Women Abuse Studies Unit, University of North London.

86. Administrative data are critically important here. While the call for sex disaggregated statistics has been made, the role of administrative data in shedding light on State actions has been neglected, yet it should “provide policy-makers with the data needed for good governance under the principles of independence, integrity, impartiality, confidentiality”.31 A key challenge is to find effective and robust data from which to develop indicators.

87. Accuracy of administrative data is critical for tracking progress, and ministries of justice and equality are responsible for ensuring that effective data recording and retrieval systems - paper and/or computerized - are in place. Harnessing the skills, resources and legitimacy of national statistical agencies/offices to ensure official bodies collect and analyse data is an underused potential. Many countries have begun to provide data on violence against women in the reporting processes under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, but few have moved to detailed biannual reporting32 and/or beyond the overemphasis on intimate partner violence.

88. Criminal justice data are undoubtedly more accurate where there is a specific law against forms of violence against women, or at least where it is relatively simple to disaggregate data by sex. This is one of the advantages of creating, for example, specific offences of domestic violence, trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced marriage. It is also possible to “flag” cases in more generic categories, as happens in many countries with respect to intimate partner and domestic violence. There is a particular challenge where administrative definitions work from gender-neutral terms such as family violence. Who is being violent to whom and in what circumstances becomes disguised. States are in a weaker position with respect to assessing how gender is an underlying factor in patterns of not just victimization and offending, but also the processing and outcome of cases.

89. At the national level, administrative data should be collected on the following categories:

• Reported cases, legal processing and outcomes for all forms of violence against women

• Protection orders: the numbers and types issued for forms of violence against women, and the proportion that were breached

• Capacity-building through training and new administrative systems

• Extent, geographical distribution, use and unmet demand for support services: helplines, shelters, counselling services, advocacy and one-stop shop provisions

31 Me, A. (2006), “Challenges in measuring violence against women within the framework of

official statistics across countries”. Paper at Royal Statistical Association. 32

For a model through violence against women observatories, see the European Women’s Lobby proposals available from the website www.womenlobby.org.

• Prevention work at the national and local levels

• Routine screening in health and other settings for early identification, and extent to which it covers all forms of violence against women

• Evaluation of promising practices and the extent to which they are mainstreamed

• Resources allocated to violence against women as part of national and local budgets, including to research

• Whether vulnerable, marginalized and isolated groups of women and girls have equal access to support and justice

Proposed indicators

90. The basic process indicator will be case attrition - the proportion of reported cases that fail to result in any form of sanction for the perpetrator. This requires tracking of reporting, prosecution and conviction rates on a year-by-year basis.

91. Increasing reporting rates can be seen to indicate decreased tolerance and increased exercise of the right to redress by women. They also might show improved recording, if there is minimal mismatch between recorded crimes and data on reporting collected in prevalence studies.

92. Prosecution rates should not only mirror increases in reporting, but also increase if legal and procedural reforms are having the desired impact.

93. Conviction rates should, similarly, stay at minimum constant and increase if procedural reforms are effective. They should not be lower than for other crimes, especially since, in many cases, the identity of the perpetrator is known.

94. The indicators are:

• Increased reporting rates (measured by administrative data from the criminal justice system)

1. Increased reporting of all forms of violence against women

2. Increased reporting of most forms

3. Increased reporting of some forms

4. Flat rates reporting of some forms

5. Flat rates of reporting of most forms

• Decreased attrition rates for prosecution and conviction (measured by administrative data from the criminal justice system) 1. Increased rates of prosecution and conviction of all forms of violence against

women

2. Increased rates of prosecution and conviction of some forms

3. Flat rates of prosecution and conviction of all forms

4. Flat rates of prosecution and conviction of some forms

5. Decreasing rates of prosecution and conviction of some forms

95. States will need to report across a range of forms of violence against women to meet the requirements of this indicator.

Victim protection

96. Much data on violence against women lie within the non-governmental organizations that women and girls turn to for support and advocacy. Most have to produce statistics for donors, and where resources have permitted the creation of networks and coalitions, yearly overviews of capacity and use are becoming more frequent. These are important elements in assessing met and unmet support needs, but must be based on the clear definition of a “case”. Cases are individuals/families who may have multiple contacts with a service, whereas measurement of interventions will count the same case a number of times. States should encourage, with necessary resources, regular audits of the extensiveness and use of the support systems. At the international level, we need an “index of support” reflecting variations in how support is provided, while calculating the proportion of victim-survivors with access to appropriate services.

97. NGOs play a critical role in providing expertise and support, and in acting as a bridge between victims and State agencies. While shelters and refuges have been the most publicized form of support, many women say the most important is a helpline which offers anonymity alongside possibilities to explore options. Helplines have operated across a range of forms of violence against women and are a keystone of provision.

98. Holistic and integrated responses may offer a range of services in one place and/or work across a range of forms of violence against women. While shelters are generally associated with intimate partner violence, such sanctuary is also required by girls and young women escaping, for example, sexual abuse, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and sexual exploitation, and for trafficking victims across or within borders. Health care and forensic evidence may be relevant across each of these crimes, making the provision of health-based provision such as sexual assault centres essential; in some jurisdictions, they now extend to intimate partner violence and children.

99. The longer-term support that many victims of violence need seldom receive the investment or publicity of crisis services. Investment in skill and knowledge about the impact of trauma and how it influences self-concept and social exclusion is essential. Enabling women to live free of

violence requires the integration of programmes for education, retraining and establishing sustainable livelihoods. Women’s self-defence programmes have proved effective in removing the debilitating effects of fear.

100. Measuring support services must move beyond counting the number of shelter or refuge places to embrace the range of services, their distribution per head of population and across the geography of States. There is also the question of unmet demand. Many NGOs report more need for their services than they can meet; shelters are full, helplines engaged, and there are waiting lists to see advocates and counsellors. National statistical agencies/offices and support service networks should work together to produce a robust methodology to estimate need and unmet demand.

101. Virtually no State can claim to have comprehensive support systems for all forms of violence against women with equality of access between urban and rural areas and across all social groups.33 Standards here have to be calculated with reference to the size of the population and local prevalence of violence against women. For instance, a small number of shelter places is appropriate for a small country, but if shelters are the only service for intimate partner violence and other forms of violence against women, and/or there are high 12-month prevalence rates, the number of required places will be higher. In many jurisdictions, responses have developed catering for specific forms of abuse, whereas in others provision is more holistic. At the national level, an index of support needs to be constructed with access calculated through capacity, population ratios and 12-month prevalence findings. The precise contours of the index will be contained in a technical report to be agreed by nation States.

102. It has been argued that indicators should address more complex matters, such as whether services are available free of charge, 24/7, and accessible by all women. A study by the Council of Europe34 uses a binary yes/no to assess these questions, but what is being measured here is uncertain. Does “yes” mean that a/some/most/all services fulfil these standards? It is not possible to operationalize a meaningful international indicator on these matters, but they are important measures to be assessed at the national level, including the availability of services to disadvantaged groups.

Proposed indicator

103. The protection indicator is an increase in the index of support services signifying an extension of specialized provision.

33 See Coy, M; Kelly, L. and Foord, J. (2007), Map of Gaps, available from

www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/documents/Map_of_Gaps.pdf, for a methodology of how to map the availability of violence against women support services. 34

Council of Europe (2006), Combating violence against women: Stocktaking study on the measures and actions taken in Council of Europe Member States.

104. The index will be calculated from national data, which alongside identifying types of provision, must record which forms of violence they address. At minimum, the index will include:

• Helpline hours calculated by the number of telephone lines and hours open

• Shelters/refuges calculated by the number of individual/family places

• Advocacy/one stop-shop advice and support services

• Specialist counselling services offering long-term support

• Specialist provision for disadvantaged groups and provision for girls

• Women’s self-defence classes

• Geographical spread across both regions and urban/rural populations

Prevention

105. While prevention is at the heart of United Nations approaches to violence against women, with elimination the eventual goal, it has been a weak aspect in State responses. What efforts have been made are ad hoc, with an emphasis on awareness-raising rather than primary prevention.

106. Attitudes underpinning violence against women are resistant to change and require long-term investment, alongside clear actions by Government to make perpetrators accountable. No Government to date has effectively combined these actions for longer than a couple of years. Violence against women has yet to be declared a priority public health issue, and we found no examples of nationally implemented education programmes for all forms of violence against women integrated throughout children’s education. Many curricula and interventions have been created, with most limited to specific forms of violence, and implemented at the local level, often by NGOs.

107. There are some examples from developing countries which aspire to create the profound transformations necessary if violence against women is to be eliminated: the “We Can” network in Asia35 and Raising Voices in Uganda36 work on violence, while Tostan has focused on female genital mutilation. All draw on human rights instruments not just to educate civil society, but also to build mass movements of women and men committed to decreasing the tolerance and prevalence of violence against women.

108. Prevention measures range from community-based and mass-media campaigns to reduce tolerance for violence against women to school policies that promote non-violence, human rights

35 www.wecanendvaw.org.

36 www.raisingvoices.org.

and more equitable gender roles. These variations are best addressed at the national level with the proposals for international indicators designed to assess interventions targeted at large proportions of populations and whether they deal with violence as an integrated issue. Again, simply counting the number of children or adults reached by single ad hoc projects is not an appropriate measurement: violence against women is not something which needs to be inoculated against, but rather is embedded in long-standing attitudes, practices and relational structures. Interventions will only contribute to the elimination of violence if they are part of planned, coherent and coordinated prevention programmes.

109. Proposed indicators:

• Existence of a countrywide awareness-raising campaign of violence against women 1. A recurrent national year-on-year campaign addressing all forms of violence

against women

2. A recurrent national year-on-year campaign addressing specific forms of violence against women

3. A one-off national campaign addressing all forms of violence against women

4. A one-off national campaign addressing specific forms of violence against women

5. A localized year-on-year campaign addressing all forms of violence against women

• Violence prevention integrated into school curriculum

1. Prevention of all forms of violence against women integrated across the entire curriculum nationally

2. Prevention of some forms of violence against women integrated across the entire curriculum nationally

3. Prevention of all forms of violence against women addressed through specific programmes nationally

4. Prevention of some forms of violence against women addressed through specific programmes nationally

5. Any of the above, but limited to local areas

Training

110. It has long been recognized that ensuring non-discrimination and procedural justice depends upon the practices of individual professionals, who act as gatekeepers or gate openers with respect to remedies and support services. Training and monitoring, therefore, becomes a key element in due diligence. Training has a number of dimensions - ensuring curricula on violence against women is automatic for all newly qualified personnel alongside in-service

training for existing staff. Basic training is necessary for all, with specialists requiring more depth. Creating a core curriculum and ensuring it is delivered offers the strongest potential for change. Simply counting the number of people trained is no indicator; rather, measurement needs to be of the percentages of new and existing recruits receiving basic and more in-depth training on all and specific forms of violence against women.

111. Proposed indicators:

• Increasing the capacity of professionals to respond appropriately to violence against women

1. Proportion of new recruits to police, social work, psychology, health (doctors, nurses and others), education (teachers) completing the core curriculum on all forms of violence against women

2. Development and delivery of a core curriculum, adapted by profession, on all forms of violence against women across police, law, social work, psychology, health, education

3. Proportion of existing police, judges, prosecutors, doctors and nurses, teachers who have had training (minimum of three days) on all forms of violence against women

4. Proportion of existing police, judges, prosecutors, doctors and nurses, teachers who have had training (minimum of two days) on some forms of violence against women

5. Number of professionals provided with training of at least 2 days on any form of violence against women in past 12 months.

3. Tracking promising practices

112. A number of promising practices are highlighted in the Secretary-General’s study and in many other publications. There is, as yet, too limited an evidence base to make these international indicators, but they should be measured at the national level, with potential feed through to the next layer of international indicators. At a minimum, States should track the following and present data where these have an impact in upholding and realizing human rights.

113. Protection measures, especially the use of civil law protection orders with respect to intimate partner violence, stalking and the protection of girls from sexual abuse, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. Other protective actions include:

• Reflection periods for trafficked women and speedy routes to settlement in their home or the destination country

• Violence as a form of gender persecution being considered grounds for asylum claims

• Ensuring equal access to all women residents, including recent migrants37

• The proportion of residential facilities, including those for the disabled, prisons, children’s homes, that have policies on violence against women

• The proportion of schools, public services, workplaces and private sector organizations with polices on the prevention of sexual harassment

• Protection and supports to enable victims to give their best evidence in court

114. Specialization is considered good practice in State agencies offering more potential for justice and reparation. The availability of the following could be documented: specialist police to take complaints and investigate; specialist forensic examination and evidence gathering; specialist prosecutors; specially trained judges and magistrates; specialist courts; and specialist victim support and advocacy linked to justice systems and processes. Whether the provision applies to one or many forms of violence needs to be addressed, as does whether these provisions can be shown to have an impact on access to justice.

115. The medico-legal system has specific responsibilities that have often been overlooked and underdeveloped in provision of services in the aftermath of violence. At the national level, there should be assessment of:

• Access to treatment for immediate injuries • Use of routine enquiry to identify violence early

• Trained forensic examiners

• Access to emergency contraception, prophylaxis for sexually transmitted infections/HIV and, if wanted, safe abortion

• Recognition of violence against women as an underlying cause of mental health problems

• Safe out- and in-patient provisions for victim-survivors with mental health problems

IV. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

116. These proposals for violence against women and State response indicators are rooted in the human rights obligations of States, understanding of indicators and the necessity of beginning from an evidence base. There is considerable work to be done to move from proposals to implementation, not least developing technical guidance, piloting and capacity-building. Once established, however, there are many entry points for

37 This would include not limiting access to welfare rights for those recently arrived for

marriage, and not setting differential ages for marriage.

internationally comparable indicators on violence against women in the work of the United Nations. This project should be taken forward by a small expert working group with representatives from relevant United Nations agencies and mechanisms, academics and experts on violence against women from developed and developing countries. This group should create the technical manual and oversee pilots in resource-rich and poor contexts, in countries with longer and shorter histories of engagement with violence against women. The technical guidance should be revised following piloting.

117. A concurrent process should be building support for the management of the data systems at the national level, with the project the lead responsibility of national women’s machinery, in partnership with national statistical agencies/offices and relevant partners. It is anticipated that the calculation of national and international indicators should, where appropriate, be done by national statistical agencies/offices working with independent experts from the non-governmental organizations and academic communities. What is undoubtedly needed are partnerships for mutual benefit, combining the legitimacy and credibility of the national statistical agencies/offices in many (but not all) States with the understanding and creativity of researchers and NGOs who have specialized in the field of violence against women. One possibility would be standing committees, linking statisticians, violence researchers on violence against women, national women’s machineries and service providers with the task of ensuring indicator data are collated and that a rich research culture is encouraged and enabled.

118. In closing, attention needs to be drawn to the “paradox of violence against women”: as States do more - change laws, increase protection, provide resources for NGO support services - it appears that levels of violence increase. This is because the initial baseline for reporting was so low. Increased reporting to institutions and in surveys should not only be expected, but understood as an indicator of success in challenging tolerance and increasing women’s sense that they have a right to protection and redress.

Annex

LIST OF STATES RESPONDENTS

Albania

Algeria

Australia

Austria

Bahrain

Belize

Brazil

Bulgaria

Cambodia

Canada

Colombia

Croatia

Cyprus

Denmark

Dominica

Dominican Republic

Ecuador

Estonia

Finland

Georgia

Germany

Ghana

Greece

Guatemala

Haiti

Hungary

Iraq

Japan

Jordan

Kazakhstan

Kuwait

Lebanon

Libyan Arab Jamahiriya

Liechtenstein

Luxembourg

Malta

Mauritius

Mexico

Moldova

Monaco

Morocco

Nicaragua

Oman

Panama

Paraguay

Philippines

Poland

Portugal

Republic of Korea

Romania

Russian Federation

Rwanda

Saudi Arabia

Singapore

Slovakia

Spain

Sudan

Sweden

Switzerland

Syrian Arab Republic

Thailand

Tunisia

Zambia

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