Early scholarship in the area of violence against women in the 1970s tended to be rooted in a criminal justice perspective (Tjaden & Thoenes 2000). Acts of violence were conceptualised in terms of criminal justice and legal responses to offenders and victims were given. In the 1990s, violence against women began to be viewed as a public health problem and was identified as a leading cause of injury and death to women. Public health agencies, including the WHO, became
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active in violence prevention and public awareness campaigns, and surveillance and monitoring was broadened through women‟s health clinics. In 1993, the Global Campaign for Women‟s Human Rights in Vienna concluded among other things that violence against women is a human rights issue.
Similarly, UN agencies have declared in many documents and forums that violence against women is an obstacle to the achievement of the objectives of equality, development and peace (Hoff 2010:18–20). The Council of Europe (2006:33) echoed these sentiments by stating that violence against women also severely constrains development, obstructing women‟s participation in political, social and economic life. As a result, its impacts include escalating costs in healthcare, social services and policing, and increased strain on the justice system.
While GBV has been defined in chapter 1, it is important for the purpose of this study to firstly define the concepts which are relevant when conducting a study on violence against women and children. These concepts include “violence”, “violence against women” and “child abuse” as described by the UN. The 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was first to arrive at an internationally agreed upon definition of violence as it pertains to women‟s experiences. Violence is defined as “any act that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, occurring in public or private life” (Johnson, Ollus &
Nevala 2008:1). The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action expanded on this definition, specifying that violence against women includes violations of the rights of women in situations of armed conflict, including systematic rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, forced sterilisation, forced abortion, coerced or forced use of contraceptives, and prenatal sex selection for female infanticide (Brownridge & Halli 2001:6).
A child is defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as anyone younger than 18 years of age. In this convention a child‟s fundamental rights include the right to survival, the right to development, the right to protection and the right to participation (Devaney, Nakray & Lazenbatt 2012). The WHO (2007) defines child abuse as “all forms of
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physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child‟s health, survival, development of a relationship responsibility, trust or power”
As signatories to the 1979 CEDAW and UNCRC, several governments have made a strong commitment to address violence against women and children.
In 2006 the UN Secretary General released an in-depth study on all forms of violence against women which highlighted that “violence against women persists in every country in the world as a pervasive violation of human rights and a major impediment to achieving gender equality”
(Secretariat of the Pacific Community 2009). The World Bank estimates that globally violence causes more ill-health for women than malaria and traffic accidents combined and that it is equally serious in causing death and incapacity among women of reproductive age as cancer (in Hillyand, Rolston & Tomlinson 2005). Ellsberg and Heise (2005:2) confirm the World Bank Report by noting that in their survey of 50 countries, they found that between 10 and 60% of women who had ever been married or had a partner had experienced at least one incident of physical violence by an intimate partner. The most common violence experienced by women globally is IPV, which is most often perpetrated by the male partner. In fact, in over 95% of domestic assaults reported in the Pacific region, the husband was the perpetrator (Jalal 2008:2).
OXFAM (2004) highlights that there are 50 million fewer women in South Asia today than there should be due to sex-selective abortions, violence and neglect. They further assert that girls and women are often denied an education, are forced into dowry marriages, and have little or no access to proper healthcare.
The above clearly indicates that individual acts of violence are supported overtly or tacitly by cultural, social or religious norms and economic inequalities which can serve to undermine legal prohibitions against such acts. Globally, the rates of IPV in a single year range from 3% or less in the USA, Australia and Canada; 27% in Nicaragua; 38% in Korea; and 52% in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Malley-Morrison 2004). Krug and WHO (2002:2) report that women are more
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likely to be murdered by an intimate partner than by anyone else. They further report that one-half of the women in some countries have experienced sexual violence by an intimate partner. In addition, up to one-half of adolescent girls report their first sexual encounters were coerced.
Turning from the international arena to regional issues, the efforts which Africa as a continent has made to combat GBV is discussed in the next section.