Violence Against Women

Cultural relativism: An enduring challenge

Catherine Moller

& 

Fanny Beneditti

IN 1994, the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) appointed, for the first time, a Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, as defined in the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy (Sri Lanka) was tasked to analyze data and make recommendations at the international, regional, and national levels concerning all forms of physical, sexual and psychological violence against women, such as battering, sexual abuse, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, violence related to exploitation, sexual harassment and intimidation, trafficking, and forced prostitution.

As she prepares to step down from her position as Special Rapporteur this month, Dr. Coomaraswamy has issued a report reviewing the progress since the 1994 creation of the mandate on violence against women. An overarching theme of the report, "Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective," is that while great strides have been made in setting standards and elaborating a legal framework, the challenge that lies ahead is the fulfillment of such rights. She applauds recent development in the prosecution of violators of women's rights, given that this empowers more victims to come forward, punishes wrong-doers, and provides a deterrent to would-be abusers. However, women need equal access to the criminal justice system which will allow them to bring their violators to justice and find the protection promised to them under the law. And, the reality remains that in many states, communities, and families, violence against women, in all its forms, continues - at times with utter impunity in the hands of state authorities.

Cultural Relativism

A key assertion of the Special Rapporteur's report, and the source of endless debates in many practical discussions of human rights implementation, concerns cultural relativism. Dr. Coomaraswamy calls it "the greatest challenge to women's rights." Culturally and locally appropriate strategies are essential, and the Special Rapporteur makes particular mention of working with local women's groups to implement rights. However, at its very core women's rights makes the assertion that women's subjugation has universal characteristics - ranging from issues in reproductive health to economic opportunity - reflecting that the very basis of human rights asserts that all people are naturally endowed at birth with rights that protect their freedom and dignity. The argument of cultural relativism, at its extreme, negates this very notion of fundamental rights for women, and it is interesting to note that it is most often in the area of women's rights that it is applied.

In the keynote address at a March 2003 meeting at the World Bank, "Laws, Institutions, and Gender Equality," in which she discussed her recent report, the Special Rapporteur pointed out that women are often assigned the role of cultural producers, or repositories of "traditional culture," in the context of rapidly changing societies. Sexual discrimination is often justified as being in accordance with religion and culture. Arguments are made to protect such notions from state scrutiny through the relegation of women to the private realm of the home and the protection of men's privacy in personal and family matters. 

Women have thus been particularly vulnerable to human rights abuse in the private sphere, with respect to such issues as sexuality, marriage, reproduction, inheritance, and the custody of children.  Cultural ideology can also be used as a means to control and police female sexuality, such as in the phenomenon of honor killings and forced marriages. Sometimes these efforts of control are even crafted in terms of women's best interests: as the Special Rapporteur pointed out, the Taliban argued that their fear of violence against women was precisely why they wanted to keep them home - and prevent them from leaving their houses, seeking medical care, or providing services to their communities.

One key piece of advice from the Special Rapporteur for the next decade is to resist these specious arguments of cultural relativism while retaining open-mindedness about the perspectives of other peoples. In approaching sensitive issues such as harmful traditional practices, for instance, we must place emphasis on the involvement of men and women in solutions to women's rights abuses in their communities.

We must also be mindful to approach problems without arrogance. Violence against women remains an integral part of every society in every part of the world. There is no one group, no matter their culture, class, religion or geographical location that is immune to this violence, as illustrated by the recent WHO study, World Report on Violence and Health. This is because violence against women, as the Nobel-prize winner Amartya Sen has so eloquently reminded us, is one of the many faces of gender inequality, or the unequal power relations between men and women.

Calling the International Community to Account

Dishearteningly, and in stark illustration of the pervasiveness of violence against women, is its prevalence within the UN system itself, among peacekeepers and even at times aid workers. The West Africa sexual exploitation crisis in early 2002 was just the latest of many scandals.

A report by the UNHCR and Save the Children UK revealed that relief workers and peacekeepers in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone had been sexually exploiting women and girls in refugee camps and offering food and medicine in return for sexual favors.

Although Ms Coomaraswamy did not include a specific chapter on this issue in her report, her recommendations speak for themselves: no less than 13 are to the international community, mostly to the UN system itself. Violence against women committed by UN personnel is shocking and unacceptable on its own terms, even before considering that it has remained, until very recently, unaddressed. Even with new codes of conduct, it is still not clear that prosecution and accountability will follow, let alone redress to the victims. 

The international community must take violence against women seriously, fully and systematically incorporate a gender perspective into its policies, programs, funding criteria, etc.  The past decade of focusing on women's advocacy and development has not led to a dramatic change in the UN system and donor community to reflect progress made on paper.

In spite of the UN commitment to promoting gender equality and mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies and programs, there has been lip-service in many instances and Dr. Coomaraswamy's comprehensive set of recommendations illustrate this.

The general practice still is to target women as a vulnerable and separate category - rather than addressing what makes them vulnerable - and highlighting women's "protection needs" - rather than looking at the varied criminal activities and threats to security that they face.

For instance, in the Special Rapporteur's comments regarding the increasing trafficking of women for prostitution in areas where UN peacekeepers are stationed, she noted that, "the UN code of conduct for peacekeepers is not enough.  Awareness training for peacekeepers should be an integral part of their training before being deployed. It is essential that all UN forces are held to the same standards of international human rights law as are nation states - to do otherwise creates a climate of impunity in which offenses proliferate."

Beyond a Rights Approach

In her conclusions, the Special Rapporteur emphasizes the need to address women's lesser economic, social, and political status which limits their practical ability to escape situations of violence and knowledge of their rights and protections. Dr. Coomaraswamy emphasized the economic, social, and political underpinnings of gender-based violence - aspects which cannot be improved through a human rights approach alone and require the efforts of development partners and the international community as a whole.

In detailing some of her field-based work on trafficking, she noted a correlation with economic and social marginalization. Women who are trafficked are overwhelmingly poor, with little formal education, and are often from groups that face ethnic discrimination. Women who voluntarily migrate into exploitative and/or sexual work - sometimes seeking escape from sexual violence in their communities or homes - are similarly marginalized. Both groups of women are often exploited or trafficked by the men of their own communities, who face similar marginalization.

Dr. Coomaraswamy also noted recent studies on patterns of domestic violence in various countries around the world, in which the level of economic independence of women was found as the main factor in determining violence against women.  However, economic and social marginalization is not only a contributing factor of gender-based violence, but also an outcome: it limits women's participation in development, is an obstacle to equitable development, and imposes costs on the individual, household, and state.

Towards Implementation

If we are to meet the Special Rapporteur's call to make the coming decade one of implementation of women's rights, we must remind ourselves that radical change is possible in our lifetime and of the great accomplishments of the past decade, aided by Dr. Coomaraswamy's work.

In addition to setting standards, there are numerous good practices and success stories that have been documented in the past decade, and many of these inspiring stories can be found in the addendum to Dr. Coomaraswamy's report. Our challenge is to continue forward with these efforts so that such success stories continue and eventually become the norm.

Catherine Moller works for the World Bank in Washington and was formerly a humanitarian relief worker and researcher with the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center.

Fanny Benedetti worked with UNHCR from 1998 to 2002, where she focused on the protection of refugee and displaced women.