Elimination and Prevention of Gender-Based Violence
through Rights-Based and Women-Oriented Approach
-- Chinese Women NGOs’
Statement
The 57th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status
of Women convened its annual session on the priority theme: Elimination and
prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls on March 4-15, 2013.
Concurrently, the 12th China’s National People’s Congress and Chinese People's
Political Consultative Conference took place. On this occasion, we, Chinese
women, NGOs and activists who are dedicated to gender equality and the
elimination of violence against women, represent the voices of women from the
grassroots level and relevant workers from various organizations to bring
forward the following views and appeals.
Violence against women and girls is a form of gender-based
violence, which refers to violence rooted in unequal gender norms and power
relations. This violence occurs in families or other intimate relationships,
workplaces, educational institutions and public spaces, with women and girls
suffering most. Gender-based violence can profoundly harm women’s and girls’
physical, psychological, and sexual health, as well as bring economic harm.
Violence hinders the fulfillment of women’s and girls’ human rights, lowers
their status in society, and can even cost them their lives. Gender-based
violence also causes losses in productivity and to the human resources in
families, society, employers/enterprises and the state. It consequently
increases expenditures/costs to individuals, institutes and the state for
medical treatment, care, social service and welfare, administration and
judiciary proceedings. Gender-based violence is the result of gender inequality,
and it perpetuates and reinforces existing gender inequalities and sex
discrimination. Therefore, to build an equal, harmonious and just society, we
must eliminate all forms of gender-based violence.
We have been greatly pleased to notice that the Chinese
government has further undertaken its responsibility and commitment to prevent
gender-based violence, abided by the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence
Against Women adopted by 1993 UN General Assembly, the Beijing Platform for
Action adopted by the UN 4th World Conference on Women in 1995, and the outcome
document of Beijing + 5 (23rd UN General Assembly Special Session). In regard to
laws and policies, terms prohibiting domestic violence have been written into
many laws, such as the amended Marriage Law, Law on the Protection of the Rights
and Interests of Women, as well as some local laws and regulations.
Consequently, a policy basis for handling and preventing sexual harassment in
the workplace has been initiated, the prevention of sexual abuse of girls in
schools has been written into the campus safety policy, and the China Action
Plan for Combating the Trafficking Women and Children (2008-2012) has been drawn
up. In the area of family planning, efforts have been made to meet women’s needs
for their sexual and reproductive health and rights, and good practices and
intervention models featuring multi-sectoral cooperation to prevent and stop
domestic violence have emerged.
During the international 16 days of Activism Against Gender
Violence Campaign from November 25 to December 10 in 2012, we collected opinions
from about 6,000 women of various ages across the country, interviewed survivors
of gender-based violence, psychological counselors, social workers, women rights
activists, lawyers, policemen, procurators, judges, decision-makers, lawmakers
and perpetrators. We realized there are still wide gaps between the goals set
for eliminating and preventing gender-based violence and efforts made to realize
these goals. There is also much work to be done in meeting victims’ varying
needs. Hence, it is urgent for the state to make breakthroughs regarding the
following aspects, with firm political will and practical, proactive actions.
• Implement international conventions and fulfill commitments
to strengthen the state’s obligation and responsibility to eliminate
gender-based violence and eradicate its root causes — gender discrimination and
gender inequality – by reviewing all existing laws and policies with a gender
perspective, discontinuing utilization of terms containing gender discrimination
or appropriately substitute them, and establishing accountability mechanisms to
prevent and address instances of government agencies’ personnel misusing their
power to commit acts of physical, mental and sexual abuse.
• Draw up comprehensive, feasible and effective laws and
policies for preventing violence and create specific, enforceable and
accountable regulations and measures to prevent gender-based violence, to
provide services to women and children affected by violence, and to punish
perpetrators and transform their behaviors.
• Expand definitions of domestic violence in existing laws, to
go beyond well-documented and severe physical abuse and explicitly include other
forms of violence, such as violating women’s right to self-determination of
their bodies and sexual life, their rights for reproductive health, forced
interference in lesbians’ marriages and intimate relations, psychological abuse,
and economic exploitation and control, so that all these forms of violence can
be addressed effectively. To bridge the gap between existing laws and their
implementation so that women suffering from gender-based violence in de facto
marriages, cohabitating partnerships, and other intimate relations will also be
able to realize their legal rights.
• Provide quality services that consider women’s needs and
interests, change the outmoded bureaucratic practices and raise the awareness of
personnel working in public service departments, law enforcement and judiciary
on the rule of law. Raise awareness and strengthen capacity in handling
violence-related cases and issues with professional and gender-sensitive
attitudes and techniques. Put an end to indifference, avoidance of
responsibility, and ineffective case processing.
• Integrate and disseminate experiences and models of
multi-sectoral interventions to stop violence, enabling the synergy of all
participants’ work to produce better results, and bringing these experiences and
models into state laws and policies, thus creating standardized and
institutionalized practices. Strengthen education by bringing prevention work to
campuses and communities and raising public awareness through media. Enable
social workers, and psychological and medical institutions to provide services
to survivors and child witnesses, and alter perpetrators’ psychology, behaviors
and habitual patterns. Police should enforce the law strictly, and reprimand and
punish all perpetrators of domestic violence. Judges should issue domestic
violence protection orders/physical protection rulings, and confirm the
circumstances of domestic violence in court decisions. Courts and prisons should
consider leniency to women who commit the self-defense murder of their
perpetrators by reducing jail sentences or releasing women on parole. Employers
and enterprises should establish mechanisms and policies to intervene in sexual
harassment.
• Recognize the important role and experiences of civil society
organizations, especially women’s NGOs, and help disseminate their good
practices and engage with them as equal partners of multi-sectoral collaboration
to combat violence against women.
Given all these facts, we believe that the
following urgent actions need to be taken:
To formulate a state action plan on the prevention and
elimination of gender-based violence, to raise legislators’ and decision makers’
attention and sensitivity to gender issues, to expedite the launching of new law
and policies on preventing gender-based violence, to review, improve and augment
the enforcement of existing laws and policies, and to conduct monitoring and
evaluation of this enforcement, to improve the availability of sex-disaggregated
data statistics on gender-based violence and public information accessibility;
to promote good practices and the multi-sectoral intervention model; to
transform the attitude and behaviors of perpetrators through education and
community services.
To refine policies and to increase budget and resources for
providing quality public services, to train various service provision personnel,
law enforcement officers and judiciaries, so as to speed up the realization of
equal service and remedy the severe shortage of services to disadvantaged groups
such as rural women, disabled women, ethnic minority women, girls, sexual
minorities and elderly women, to build a support and service system to ensure
social insurance and social integration for violence survivors and sufferers. To
encourage and support civil society organizations to conduct activities aimed at
preventing gender-based violence, and to fund more pilot projects and
action-oriented research.
Women’s economic empowerment and political participation are
effective means for preventing violence. We call for: globally, the
incorporation of gender justice and women’s empowerment into the Post-2015
Development Agenda with specific objectives and indicators related to
gender-based violence; in China, the 12th Five-Year Plan for the National
Economy and Social Development and macro-economic policies should be integrated
with the Program for the Development of Chinese Women, to enable the pursuit of
gender equality, to reinforce economic equity, social justice, transparent
administration and democratic governance, thus enabling women and girls to
equally enjoy the achievement of social and economic development, better master
their own lives, and participate in decision-making on public issues that affect
their interests.
Let us build a violence free world with equality and
justice.
March 4, 2013
Initiated by:
Anti-Domestic Violence Network/Beijing Fan Bao
Common Language
Gender
and Development Network in China
Gender and Public Policy Network
Media
Monitoring Network for Women
Women’s Rights Activists:
CAI Yiping
(Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, DAWN)
CHUNG Lai
Shan
FENG Yuan
LEE Kim
LI Huiying
LU Ping
WANG Guohong
WANG
Xiying (Beijing Normal University)
WU TaoYunnan Heart to Heart Community Care
Center)
.jpg)
