Universal-Womens-accesss-to-justice-Publications-Practitioners-Guide-Series-2016-ENG

186 PRACTITIONERS GUIDE No. 12
CHAPTER VIII
IMPROVING CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS AND
FIGHTING IMPUNITY
Each link in the criminal justice chain must incorporate
the principle of non-discrimination
Laws must enforce respect for women’s integrity and
dignity
The CEDAW Committee has stressed that “States parties should
ensure that laws against family violence and abuse, rape,
sexual assault and other gender-based violence give adequate
protection to all women, and respect their integrity and
dignity”. 506
Generally, States categorize assaults and unlawful killings 507 as
crimes in their criminal codes. The persistent passivity shown
by States in failing to investigate and prosecute assaults and
killings of women by men has often been seen primarily as a
failure of criminal justice.
A critique sometimes made of certain criminal laws and
procedures, and the justice systems through which they are
administered, is that they are often predicated on assumptions
that men are entitled to “discipline” a spouse, intimate partner
or female relative – or in some cases, any woman or girl –
using violent means. When such assumptions are present,
impunity for the violent conduct is, unsurprisingly, often the
consequence. Similar assumptions may also underpin attitudes
within the law and its administration whereby men are seen as
entitled to eradicate “the shame” of a wife or female relative
who has sex or other intimate contact outside marriage, or is
506
CEDAW General Recommendation No 19, “Violence against
women”, UN Doc A/47/38 (1992), paragraph 24(b).
507
Such acts have a variety of terms under domestic criminal laws, for
example, homicide, murder, manslaughter, assault, wounding, causing
bodily harm and the like.