When I was a Master student of Human Rights and Humanitarian Action, I had to do a final oral examination defending a certain thesis or position that was somewhat related to a mandatory internship experience in order to get my diploma. We were given a few topics in advance and I chose gender.
I knew the thesis I want to defend had to be interesting and “juicy” — as in, I could actually discuss it and not fill up my oral examination with meaningless platitudes. So, based on my internship experience, I decided to do it on domestic violence as a human rights issue.
But there was a problem. I had a previous class with professors who used to work for Amnesty Internacional who told me that while some forms of violence against women were human rights issues (rape as a weapon of war, sexualized police brutality against protestors, etc.) domestic violence was not a matter of international human rights law and, as such, it was not really a “human rights issue” technically speaking.
I decided that my final oral examination would be to prove that professor wrong and I started researching scholars and practitioners with different views. Although he was not the one in charge of the exam, I was pretty surprised anybody working in human rights held that position at all. I had a double challenge: first, to reframe domestic violence as a human rights issue and second, to expose it as a matter of gender inequality.
So, can domestic violence be reframed as a human rights issue, technically speaking? Short answer, yes.
Despite traditional views of international human rights law, which usually exclude domestic violence, it is often a cause of human rights violation for which States are directly responsible. When this is the case, it usually stems from discriminatory practices and gender inequality. I take domestic violence to mean “all acts of physical, sexual, psychological or economic violence that occur with the family or domestic unit or between former or current spouses or partners”.
Domestic violence receives little attention from human rights bodies and NGOs, in comparison to other issues such as rape used as a weapon of war or female genital mutilation. I find this worrying because domestic violence by an intimate partner is the most widespread form of gender-based violence, being present in basically all countries, ethnic groups, cultures…and disproportionately affecting women — in fact, globally 30% of women have experienced some sort of physical or sexual violence in the context of an intimate relationship, according to the WHO. According to the UN Office of Drugs and Crime It is estimated that of all women who were the victims of homicide globally in 2012, almost half were killed by intimate partners or family members, compared to less than six per cent of men killed in the same year. Some countries, such as Iran, do not even have laws against it and many others, such as Russia, have loopholes and exemptions that excuse domestic violence. As for Europe, many countries still struggle with proper training for police authorities and offer no protection to undocumented victims.
Despite the prevalence of domestic violence all over the world it is not usually considered to be a human rights violation. This is usually due to the fact that the perpetrators of domestic violence are individuals in their private life, they are not agents of the State nor do they act on its behalf. However, domestic violence does not exist in a vacuum and it can usually be either prevented, stopped or worsened by the action or lack of action of State authorities.
According to Dorothy Q.Thomas and Michele E. Beasley, there are four reasons why domestic violence has remained largely ignored by international law: “(1)traditional concepts of state responsibility under international law and practice; (2) misconceptions about the nature and extent of domestic violence and states’ responses to it; (3) the neglect of equality before and equal protection of the law without regard to sex as a governing human rights principle; and (4) the failure of states to recognize their affirmative obligation to provide remedies for domestic violence crimes”. As domestic violence exists primarily between private individuals, it is not traditionally seen to fall in the ambit of human rights law.
Yearly, domestic violence causes thousands of victims to be mutilated and murdered and often national criminal laws are not enough to put a stop to it, especially because there are cultural taboos that prevent the victims to come forward, even in European countries. When scholars and practitioners refuse to see domestic violence as a human rights issue, they seem to be perpetuating the myth that it is mostly a private affair. However, there is now sufficient case law to elevate domestic violence as a matter for international human rights law.
The European Court of Human Rights has, in fact, recognized that domestic violence can result in human rights violations in certain cases, specifically, those in which authorities are unwilling to protect the victim or prosecute the offender. The Court has ruled in favor of domestic violence victims whose rights were violated, such as the right to be free from torture and from inhuman or degrading treatment or the right to respect for privacy and family life. The Committee of 1981 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (also known as CEDAW) has also found human rights violations in three cases related to domestic violence in Austria and Hungary. Domestic violence is also considered to be grounds for asylum in the United States, since a decision by the U.S. Board of Immigration appeals in 2014. Finally, the first international convention dealing specifically with domestic violence also came into force in 2014, namely, the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (usually called Istanbul Convention).
These examples show that domestic violence is increasingly entrenched in international human rights law. But why it should be considered a gender equality issue?
First, as I have mentioned, domestic violence disproportionately affects women and some scholars defend that that is one of the reasons why it has failed to become a pressing issue. They argue that domestic violence is usually a result of gender inequality and patriarchal ideals of treating women as submissive and property of their husbands, to do with as they please. The European Court of Human Rights has also considered that State policy related to domestic violence can indeed be the result of discriminatory practices. In different cases in Moldova and in Turkey, the Court has found that there were systematic practices to refrain from protecting women from violence, thus incurring in a violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, prohibition from discrimination.
In all these cases, the victims had to present substantial evidence that the authorities had refused or were unwilling to pursue the cases because the victim was a woman.
Lately, however, domestic violence perpetrated by women against men has also began to attract attention from NGOs and advocacy groups, and men are usually more reluctant to come forward when they are victims, as the authorities as less willing to believe them. Could this mean that domestic violence is a gender-neutral crime? I would argue it is not, because the reasons why men do not come forward or are not are equally based on sexist ideals that men are the ones in charge and that women are inferior. When a male victim is not believed and is often mocked, it is because he is viewed as feminine, as passive and weak. The man is not believed because he is viewed as a woman, as an object and not a subject.
This way, domestic violence can be seen as one of the ultimate issues of gender inequality, which demonstrates how much it can hurt both women and men in getting justice.
It is very important to consider domestic violence a human rights issue that results in human rights violations, for three main reasons:
First, to break cultural taboos that it is a private matter. Domestic violence is a global epidemic and it should be treated like one.
Second, because domestic violence victims see several of their rights violated — freedom from torture, freedom from discrimination and the right to life, just to mention a few, and we need to hold States accountable for causing these tragedies. States which have no laws against domestic violence and those which ignore existing laws are complicit in the murder and suffering of the victims.
Third, by holding States accountable, we can encourage them to prevent domestic violence through proper training of authorities and public education. Early interventions in schools and local communities can disperse myths and encourage people to come forward, as well as educate the population in issues that are still cause for confusion, such as marital rape — many victims aren’t even aware such a thing exists.
Obviously, not all cases of domestic violence are human rights violations, but it is a global human rights issue that must be dealt with by the international community as a whole.
In the end, my examiners were much more informed about the international conventions and mechanisms for women’s rights and they supported my claim. I had a pretty nice grade and I was proud of myself.
When I started working for a women’s rights NGOs, I was told most feminist groups dislike the term “domestic violence” precisely because it seems so neutral and broad. Although I agree there are certainly better terms for it, the main misconception that we have to change is that violence that takes place within a private home, behind closed doors, perpetrated by private citizens, can still be a human rights violation, if the State or State agents do not try to prevent it and are unwilling to properly protect the victims.
This is something campaigners and advocacy professionals from victims’ services and shelters should think about when implementing awareness-raising campaigns. How to present domestic violence in a way that engages of all of society? By demonstrating its existence goes against fundamental human rights, of women in particular. And that male violence against women is not a problem of a particular man or relationship, but a systemic one.
When a woman is murdered, her murderer is not the only person to blame for her death. Her death means the whole system failed. And if we do not hold State authorities accountable, we will not be able to combat domestic violence or any kind of male violence against women, because we will keep thinking it is a “problem” between two or more individual citizens.
Useful references
Board of Immigration Appeals, Matter of A-R-C-G- et al., Respondents Decided August 26, 2014.
Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, Istanbul, 11.V.2011.
Dorothy Q. Thomas and Michele E. Beasley, “Domestic violence as a human rights issue” in Human Rights Quarterly Vol. 15, №1, February 1993, pages 36–62.
European Institute for Gender Equality, “Women victims of domestic violence receive insufficient support in the EU”, 23 November, 2012.
Human Rights Watch, “The Law Was Against Me: Migrant Women’s Access to Protection to Family Violence in Belgium”, November 8, 2012.
Human Rights Watch, “One day I’ll kill you”: Impunity in Domestic Violence Cases in the Brazilian State of Roraima”, June 21, 2017.
Ronagh McQuigg, “Domestic violence as a human rights issue: Rumor V. Italy” in European Journal of International Law, Vol. 26, Issue 4, November 2015, pages 1009–1025.
WHO, “Violence Against Women — Factsheet”, last updated on November 2017.
