HUMAN RIGHTS | Defending human dignity
13 March 2008
Secretary Rice Convenes Global Forum for Women’s Justice
Goal is to prevent violence against women, increase access to justice
Washington -- Legal practitioners from 17 countries around the world gathered at the State Department March 12 to explore ways to prevent violence against women and provide women with equal access to justice.
“In our world today,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in the keynote address, “one out of every three women will be beaten, raped or otherwise abused during her lifetime.” Passing laws to protect women is not enough, she said. “Laws must be enforced by effective and responsible governments.”
Rice also pointed to a violent crime against women “that stands out above the rest” -- trafficking in women. Roughly 800,000 people worldwide are subjected to this modern form of slavery, which exploits mostly women and girls.
Distinguished judges, law experts and practitioners attended the forum. Including were: the attorney general of Malawi; the deputy attorney general of Pakistan; the chief justices of the high courts of Bahrain, Benin, Ghana and Morocco; and justices from the high courts of Argentina, Bangladesh, Hungary, Liberia and Sierra Leone. State and federal court justices and judges and attorneys from across the United States also attended, as did representatives of nongovernmental organizations concerned with women’s issues.
CHANGING CULTURAL ATTITUDES ABOUT WOMEN
Sharing the podium with Rice was Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. The retired associate justice cited studies that show that only half the women subjected to domestic violence find any recourse in their country’s justice system.
But education and economic opportunities significantly reduce the chances that a woman will be abused, O’Connor said, and she urged aggressive promotion of gender equality and human rights for women.
O’Connor said changing cultural attitudes about women is critical in empowering women. Decades ago, she said, many in the United States believed wives who were beaten by their husband somehow “deserved” it.
“It is in recognizing and responding to this fundamental difference in the experiences of gender that courts and legislatures face their most difficult challenges, both in the United States and around the globe. Nowhere is this challenge more evident than in the field of domestic violence,” O’Connor said.
“In the last 20 years in this country, federal, state and local governments have worked to try to hold offenders in domestic abuse cases accountable and to provide some support to the victims,” O’Connor said. “Penalties for domestic violence have increased throughout this country,” she said, and shelters and support systems for women and their children have been established. As a result, she said, “in the last 10 years the Bureau of Justice [Statistics] in this country estimates that domestic violence rates fell by more than 50 percent because of these efforts.”
O’Connor said that while women in the United States and around the world still have much more work to do to banish domestic violence, the progress achieved so far indicates that this crime against women can be eliminated.
INCREASING PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS
Avon Products Inc. co-hosted the event. Andrea Jung, chairman and chief executive officer of the company, said that the Avon Foundation -- the world’s largest foundation dedicated solely to improving the lives of women -- launched in 2004 its “Speak Out Against Domestic Violence” initiative in the United States. Avon already has awarded more than $6 million to more than 250 domestic violence organizations in the United States.
Avon is also donating $1 million to the United Nations Trust Fund to launch the Avon Women’s Empowerment Fund. The goal is to provide financial and technical assistance to innovative programs that foster women’s empowerment and gender equality.
Avon, which sells beauty products worldwide, employs 5.4 million representatives to serve more than 300 million women in more than 100 countries. “We are by far the largest network of women in the world,” Jung said.
Jung called for greater public-private partnerships: “If we fuse our strengths, the vast resources and commitments in the private sector, combined with the public sector’s expertise and grassroots networks, then, working together, our voices will be that much louder, our impact that much greater, and our solutions that much closer.”
