UN Commission- Monitoring Implementation of Domestic Violence Laws.
At the UN Commission on the Status of Women Conference in New York this week, and just had a day of INCREDIBLE talks, and inspiring stories and action planning to increase gender equality around the world! Such a privilege to be here!
8:30 am Church Centre for the United Nations.
Monitoring Implementation of Domestic Violence Laws
The Advocates for Human Rights
COPIES FOR THIER REPORTS ON WEBSITE
Speakers-
Cheryl Thomas- executive Director in Minasota
Robyn Phllips
Genoveva Tisheva- Bulgaria Gender Research Foundation
Helen Rubenstine- Deputy Director
Cindy Dyer- Director of the Federal office
Introduction by Cheryl Thomas- executive Director in Minnesota.
Background of the group- working since 1993 on legal reform on domestic violence. Focuses on improving laws and their implementation. Partnering around the world. In Minnesota there has been ling term history for amending their domestic violence laws to hold offenders accountable. Looking at what worked, what didn't. Looking at drafting the language of laws for countries, training legal professionals, and at the invitation of local partners who know the situation in their own countries.
They work in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Morocco. It is the matter of who reaches out to the organization.
So far they have put out 24 reports from around the world on violence against women and the implementation of laws. These reports help allow countries and regions to change laws.
Originally when the reports came out, most places they were researching were using general criminal laws. In the last 40 years, many of their partner countries have specific domestic violence laws that have gone in to deal with certain situations. So instead of applying a general assault law, there are now laws to deal with domestic violence specifically.
Third goal of the UN Millennium Development Goals: Promote gender equality and empower women- Limiting and stoppage violence against women is a fundamental part this.
The law reflects that domestic violence is not a private matter. It is a legal issue and focuses on the offender instead of the belief that women deserve this fate. By changing the way the state handles violence it can also change the way society address and views it.
Drafting of these laws is a long and tedious process and requires activism, activity and ownership. Changing laws takes decades. In 1979 one of the first domestic violence laws was passed in Minnesota, and every single year it has been amended. It takes constant vigilance to get these laws to work. This involves looking at a number of factors- where do the women end up in the initial calls, how are people acting on it on the ground, is there a need for training.
Without monitoring and constant vigilance, laws can actually do more harm than good. Government intervention in domestic violence is tricky. You need someone on the front lines to get the offender to stop. This is the role of the police. This brings in a whole lot of other issues- police need to be trained in things like a new order for protection (how long they give these laws, how much follow up), or identifying situational wounds (whose the aggressor, what wounds are from self defence.) etc.
First Speaker- Genoveva Tisheva Bulgaria Gender Research Foundation
Started the domestic violence laws implementation in Bulgaria 20 years ago. The reform was driven by lawyers and with the help of The Advocates for Human Rights. It is up to lawyers to work with people and push these laws forward. The EU has the largest body of research on this issue.
In the EU every 3rd woman experiences violence. %33 of women have experienced sexual and physical violence. %43 of all women have experienced psychological violence. %22 from partners, %5 of women, %42 victims of violence was during pregnancy. %55 of women have suffered harassment, %18 of women have suffered stalking. These create long-term problems such as panic attacks, inability to connect with new partners, etc.
Very few women know where to go or know that there are laws that can help them. Passing the law is not enough. There is a deficit of services such as where to go, or rehabilitating programs for offenders. Violence is also dependant on other equality factors such as education, work and self-sustainability.
There really needs to be awareness in conjunction with these laws or they are ineffective. There also needs to be monitoring of how these laws work and continually reform them. The police also need to be ready to work with these laws. The actual implementation of these laws is the most difficult part, not the passing of the law.
Because of these reports, the government now provides finical support to implement these laws on the ground. The judges and lawyers now understand these laws better. In bulgaria there is still a social tendency to side with the offender, and these reports have begun to change that in the judicial system. It has helped with training to identify wounds and trauma, and to force offenders to be prosecuted.
What they're pushing for in the coming years- The prosecution should be public and the offenders should be punished more severally.
Helen Rubenstine- Monitering Domestic Violence in Mongolia
The newest report from The Advocates for Human Rights coming from Mongolia .
Why mongolia? There was a long term partner there who had invited them.
Civil law of domestic protection that was in place but had not been implemented. Having a report allowed parliament to have the deliberations on amending this law in terms of what was working and what wasn't.
First, preparation- familiarizing with the local criminal, family, administrative laws. How these laws worked together to address the issue. Lots of background research, to formulate questions.
Then made up questions for each of the sectors- police, prosecutors, advocate, victims.
In January 2013, went to do ground research with these questions, came back, reformulated these questions, then more ground research. Interviewing 137 people across most of Mongolia.
From these they identified themes, and made recommendations.
Januray 2014 they released the report and went back to Mongolia to do awareness campaigning.
In 2004 Mongolia had put in a law for a restraining order provision, and putting restrictions on the perpetrators actions. This is the type of law that has the most success. However, the implementation of this law was poor, which almost makes it more dangerous for victims who think they will be protected, but then aren't. The police, and law courts weren't identifying with these laws or using them.
They also had no criminal law that addresses domestic violence. Assault laws have a focus on severe violence, but domestic violence needs laws that deals with smaller, repeated violence. There needs to be laws that address strangulation, stalking, emotional violence, etc. Penalties within domestic violence should actually be higher than for general assault.
Another problem, there was no one enforcing the restraining orders granted to these women, so the risk actually goes up. There was also a "reconciliation period" period that women legally had to go through to get divorce, where women had to try and make up with their spouse, as well, women who were pregnant and had a child under 1 year were not eligible for divorce. This needed to be changed.
From this report came a consolation meeting at the Mongolian Parliament. At the beginning of the meetings, when asked, "what do you think is the cause of domestic violence?", and the answer was "alcohol". But at the end of these talks there was a shift in thinking, that it is not alcohol, but attitudes towards women that need to change. They are looking to amend the law, put in more support for ground forces like police and shelters.
Cindy Dyer- Vice President for Human Rights Vital Voices Global Partnership
Working with women leaders around the world- direct service providers, justice system actors, government officials, business leaders.
There needs to be 4 things to change to a functional system- Services, Awareness, Legislation, Implementation.
Legislation- forcing police to prosecute offenders
Dyer worked as a criminal prosector before and after these laws and has seen how it has changed. Forcing judges and police to keep the laws promise.
How do we improve legislation? Tie money to successful implementation, training, coordinated community response.
Tie money to successful implementation- Money can be used as an incentive- giving money for training, and partnering with good organizations.
Training- In order to do good training there are some qualities. Needs to be multi-dicipilanary, NGOs, government, judges, police. If you're going to train someone, use people who have real experience with these issues. "street cred"
Invest in local faculty to do the training. In training, you can just teach prosecutors and police HOW to do something, you have to make them believe WHY they should. Training as to why its important.
Each community needs a task force- Not only multidisciplinary, but one that is locally led, not large scale. Needs and timing need to be decided on a local level. The task force should have locals who state the real stats of that area. If this task force meets on a regular basis, it will help with the implementation. Everything needs to be victim focused, not just convictions, or trails but other things such as, how many victims were severed at a shelter, how many women were told in person about these laws, how many women were walked to the police station to file.
Questions-
1) How do we, in reporting, deal with the issues of rural contexts where the community structure enforces the violence? And how do you deal with multiple offenders such as husband, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, etc?
Cindy Dyer- in Dallas, in rural areas there will not be special lawyers to deal with this. The focus is on the multidisciplinary task force. Connecting the rural victim to the task force who can connect them to locals who will lobby on behalf of the woman, or offer real shelter for these women.
Genoveva Tisheva, Bulgaria Gender Research Foundation- again, having a local community base that reaches out to the victims.
Cheryl Thomas- on the problem of having many perpetrators- having evidence based trials instead of cases that are based on victim testimony which is normally the case. The victim shouldn't be the one convincing the judge to side with her, it should be based on evidence and then it's not a case of some people's words against the victim.
2) In 1998, there was a domestic violence law passed in Tiwan, but the judges are not listening to local partners. Sometimes there is an importance to have an outside "expert" to partner with the locals to help train. And training will not work without trainers who have personal experience. Judges training judges, cops training cops, etc. You need the stats, but also the ground research of what happens after those stats are released.
3) Cops are sometimes the largest partners and are direly needed to be on board to implement these laws. They are the front line and the direct enforcers and educators of these laws.
4) What are the programs that are available to re-educate batterers? Batterers intervention programs- there are some in Minnesota (info on the AfHR website), but it is difficult to measure the success. Post conviction perps can be ordered to attend these programs. Hold offenders accountable, but still making sure to be focused on the victims first and foremost. The approach of being perpetrator focused doesn't actually work, it can only work in conjunction with being victim focused. Until mindsets change, until victims are willing to remove themselves, there will be no change.
5) What are your programs of intervention for breaking the cycle with children who have grown up in violent homes?
Some examples- Futures without violence, Coaching Boys into Men, Men Engaged, Virtual Knowledge Centre on Violence Against Women, endvawnow,org, Man Up Campaign.
