“Human Rights Protection, Democratic Deliberation”
47
Since the adoption of the Vienna
Declaration
in 1993, the
phenomenon of violence against women (VAW) has been received
in general as falling within the system of international human rights
and in particular as a violation of women’s rights as human rights.
Extensively studied,
1
VAW has been declared to be “a
manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men
and women,” and “one of the crucial social mechanisms by which
women are forced into a subordinate position.”
2
VAW takes many
forms: physical, psychological, sexual, and economic.
3
It has
multiple causes (Chalk & King, 1998; Crowell & Burgess, 1996;
Heise, 1994; Heise, Ellsberg, & Gottemoeller, 1999; World Health
Organization, 2010)
—
cutting across lines of class, ethnicity,
geography, race, religion, and other social divide. Not surprisingly,
in global terms, “up to seventy percent of women” experience in
1
The journal
Violence against Women
was established in 1995. For accounts of the
long and complex history of women’s rights, international law and institutions
prior to and following the conceptual and political breakthrough that transformed
women’s rights as human rights, among others, see Ackerly (2008); Ackerly and
Okin (1999); Agosin (2001); Bell, Nathan, and Peleg (2001); Cook (1994); Gaer
(2009); Lockwood (2006); Molyneux and Razavi (2002); Peters and Wolper
(1995).
2
Sixth paragraph of the preamble of the 1993
Declaration on the Elimination of
Violence against Women
(United Nations). Violence against women refers to acts
that target women, specifically because they are women. These gender-based acts
impair or nullify women’s ability to exercise their rights and freedoms as citizens;
these include “threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty”
that “result in, or are likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or
suffering to women” whether such acts occur “in public or private life” (Article
One of the
Declaration
). In addition to this
Declaration
, principal documents
detailing the multi-faceted features of VAW have emerged out of the Beijing
Conference in 1995, the Platform for Action following the Beijing Conference,
and the Beijing Plus Five Conference in 2000.
3
The dynamics of this phenomenon are not exhausted by these four forms. In
particular, as rendered by the United States Supreme Court in the case
United
States v. Castleman, 572 US (2014), what constitutes domestic violence in the
American society has now been expanded to include “seemingly minor acts,” such
as, pushing, grabbing, shoving, hair pulling, “a squeeze of the arm that causes a
bruise” (Liptak, 2014).
