MOSAIC - The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work

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b) physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community,
including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in
educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;
c) physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the
state, wherever it occurs.
Perpetrators may benefit in different ways when committing acts of violence. Genderbased
violence on the one hand is a way of ensuring women’s inferior position in
society. On the other hand, as in the case of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered
(LGBT) people and violence against men, it has the function of correction by example
because LGBT people do not act according to dominant masculine gender roles and
they are perceived as posing a threat to the normalised and dominant demands of
male gender roles. 127 As can be seen, GBV is not exclusive to women and girls, but
it principally affects them across all cultures. Since young women’s sexual identities
are often marginalised and discriminated against socially and politically, they are
particularly vulnerable to these types of violence. 128 Within the domain of youth
work, both the victims and perpetrators of GBV are present in schools, youth clubs,
organisations, work camps and projects. 129
The most common form of gender-based violence is domestic violence. Since it occurs
at home, it has long been considered a private affair, in which the state and the judicial
system have not taken the responsibility to interfere. Yet domestic violence is not only
a violation of the physical and psychological well-being of the women concerned,
but it also a direct attack on their human rights, while also being a criminal offence. 130
The United Nations Special Rapporteur has stated that it is a powerful tool of oppression
and it serves as an essential component in societies which oppress women, because
violence against women not only derives from but also sustains the dominant gender
stereotypes and is used to control women in the one space traditionally dominated
by women, the home. 131
In the EU, between 20% and 50% of women of all classes and ages are victims of
domestic violence; one fifth of women are subjected to sexual assault at some stage
in their lives, the age of the victims ranging from two months to 90 years; 95% of all
acts of violence against women in the EU occur within the home, 98% of aggressors
are male and 50% are married men or living in a de facto marriage or as a couple. 132
Death is sometimes the result: in France six women every month and in Finland an
average of 27 women every year die as a result of domestic violence; in the United
Kingdom, two women die every week as a result of attacks by their partners or former
partners. There are no similar statistics for southern Mediterranean countries, but it
must be assumed that such violence is as endemic as it is in the EU. 133
Another key problem for countries on both sides of the Mediterranean is trafficking
in human beings, especially in women and children. It means “the recruitment, transportation,
transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of
force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of
power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or
benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for
the purpose of exploitation.” 134 Increased illegal migration into the EU and the movement
of people as a result of rising flows and stronger restrictions on legalisation have
also brought about increased trafficking. In 2005, it was estimated that globally between
700 000 and two million women and children were trafficked every year and
that selling women into forced prostitution had become one of the fastest-growing
criminal activities in the world economy. 135
T-Kit No.11 - MOSAIC - The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work