Undercurrent-Issue-Fall-Winter-2014-3

ecommendations on “abused women” and “trafficking” but it was not until the early 1990s that womenreally began to organize to put the issue on national and global policy agenda. At the United NationsConference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, with its theme that “women’s rights are human rights”,the countries of the world discussed violence against women as a violation of human rights that ought tobe treated as a crime.! Before Vienna, mainstream human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch andAmnesty International did not treat domestic violence or rape as core issues of human rights.! So the international dialogue began changing from the 1980s to the 1990s. Violence againstwomen became one of the areas of critical concern addressed at the Fourth World Conference onWomen." Why at the Women’s Conference, why not at the UN Conference on Social Development alsoheld in 1995? Well, it is our long experience that when women come together to discuss their prioritiesas women, they put the issue of violence on the table. When women are part of broader movementssuch as political parties or unions or environmental groups, their issues are subordinated to the largerpriorities of the group – women’s issues are seen as only important to women so freedom movementswant women in the streets but then tell them to go home when the revolution is won." So by 1995, the world has the CEDAW Convention, the Vienna Declaration on Violence againstWomen, and the Beijing Platform for Action. What did all this meant for the femocrats within CIDA? Weworked with country programmes to influence their plans and as a result, CIDA set up “Gender EqualityFunds” and “Human Rights Funds” in many partner countries. These were designed to supportautonomous women’s organizations, human rights organizations, and “national machineries”, that is theequivalent of Canada’s department of Status of Women and Ministries of Justice, to: 1) advocate forchanges in criminal law to make rape and domestic violence a crime and to adjust related family law; 2)train judges in the interpretation of the law using CEDAW; 3) train police men and women to receivecomplaints under the new legislation; 4) help women’s groups in their advocacy; 5) help them set upshelters and associated support for women who move out of difficult situations. We brought officials andactivists from partner countries to tour and meet with officials, police, judges, activists, and shelterworkers in Canada and we sent Canadians to Paraguay and the Philippines and many other places toshare our lessons learned." Despite the glacial process of international negotiation, an internationally agreed document suchas the CEDAW Convention or the Beijing Platform for Action can be a lever for changes. Thesedocuments act as a compass to guide governments and ministers to monitor whether their departmentsor countries are on or off track. Governments are expected to report on progress to the UN. UnitedNations agencies such as the UNDP and UN Women produce report cards that provide comparativedata – certainly it was useful for me and my colleagues to say that if Canada wanted to be in the samecategory as Sweden or the Netherlands, we needed to up our game." Human rights scholars and feminist activists argue that there is a tipping point after whichinternational norms begin to cascade – indeed, the literature seems to indicate that when about a third ofcountries adapt a norm such as making domestic violence a criminal act it becomes “the thing to do” formost other countries. This makes me hopeful." From before the Trojan War till late in the last century, violence against women in its multipleforms – whether wife-beating, rape, dowry-burning or female genital cutting – was calmly accepted,viewed either as private misfortunes or as feudal cultural practices, rather than as evidence of theunacceptable oppression and denial of the human rights of one half of the human race.# Today, everysociety is forced to address these forms of violence, even if both Iran and the Vatican plead that theirreligious dogmas outrank any discussion of equality for women.7