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Violence against women: legal developments

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The AIV has examined the sections related to human rights and has noted that its conclusions largely answer the questions posed in the original request to the AIV. It limits the main thrust of its advisory report to the most recent developments in international law related to protecting the human rights of women, with special attention to violence against women. On 21 May 2000 the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the State Secretary for Social Affairs and Employment requested the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) to prepare an advisory report on the multi-year equal opportunities policy document (request enclosed as Annexe I). The AIV was asked to provide suggestions and views on the direction to be taken on human rights policy, as set out in the section on human rights and women.1 In recent months several reports and papers have been written and incorporated into the finalised multi-year equal opportunities policy document.2 The AIV has examined the sections related to human rights and has noted that its conclusions largely answer the questions posed in the original request to the AIV. After consultation with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (SZW), the AIV has therefore decided to limit the main thrust of its advisory report to the most recent developments in international law related to protecting the human rights of women, with special attention to violence against women. It also looks at government proposals for tackling gender-based discrimination, which continues to be a deeply-rooted phenomenon in many countries. Progress in this area has been limited and slow. The request states that recent decades have seen important developments in international law relating to combating violence against women. The AIV was asked to appraise them and give its opinion on whether the new international norms have been defined clearly enough to protect women's rights effectively. There are still some differences of interpretation of the terms used. These are often related to the issue of universality versus cultural relativism, the subject of a 1998 AIV report which also examined ways of protecting women's rights. In principle, the issues and the conclusions reached have not changed since then. In this connection the AIV will therefore confine itself to a general reference to that advisory report. To gain insight into which organisations have been working on the issue of violence against women in recent decades and into the types of violence that are involved, the AIV has commissioned two background reports. The first report, written by Dr I. Boerefijn,4 shows that many international organisations are working to prevent and eliminate violence against women and have developed specific programmes and projects to that end. Each one interprets ‘violence against women’ in its own way, and differences of opinion exist on definitions and their application. Developments in formulating legal definitions and in criminalising forms of violence are the main themes of the second report, written by Ms H.M. Verrijn Stuart.5 The AIV would like to thank both authors for these reports, which will be published separately. Section I of this advisory report looks at a number of general legal aspects of violence against women and the development of norms in several international forums. Section II examines the monitoring of compliance with the norms, with reference to specific kinds of violence against women such as honour crimes. It also examines types of violence against women which have not yet been explicitly condemned by international bodies or which the AIV believes should receive more attention (such as genital mutilation). Section III looks at other relevant developments and at the desirability of creating a single unambiguous definition of violence against women. It also looks at new developments in the law, at the formulation of definitions in the criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and at the drafting of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. Section IV briefly examines aspects of the policy on prosecution and on granting refugee status in the Netherlands in the light of the developments detailed in this advisory report. Section V presents a summary of the recommendations.

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Availability

KP.IV.00075	KP.IV AND v	My Library	Available
KP.IV.00075-01	KP.IV AND v	My Library	Available
BK02143PerpusKP		My Library	Available

Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

KP.IV AND v

Publisher

The Hague : Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV)., 2001

Collation

20p. ; 29,5 cm

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

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Classification

KP.IV

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

No. 18, February 2001

Subject(s)

Kekerasan terhadap perempuan

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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