Women's Human Rights - Editorial

WIN News, Spring, 2002 by Fran P. Hosken

As in previous years, Women's Human Rights are the main feature of this spring issue. The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are published annually the end of February by the Department of State and sent to Congress as required by law. WIN NEWS publishes selected sections on women which have to be included in every report. Initially, the Reports only covered countries that received U.S. assistance, but for over 20 years all countries have been surveyed.

Women at first were only included in a few countries. WIN NEWS pointed out that women are half of each population and lobbied Congressional and pertinent decision makers in the State Department. One persuasive argument WIN NEWS made to have reports on women included was and is that violence against women seriously undermines economic development. As the record shows we succeeded to have women included in all reports.

These Reports now provide the most comprehensive and comparative survey of the status of women around the world. The information is gathered all year in each country based on legislation, government initiatives, communication with local NGOs, press reports, from the police and judiciary and more. Each Embassy is required to compile information throughout each year according to specific subject headings.

Given the great diversity of societies, countries, geographic and physical surroundings and economic development, it is astonishing to learn that in every single society - without exception - men rule over women by violence. Men beat, mistreat, rape and exploit women in every country. But what is most depressing is that women have tolerated indeed accepted this treatment for centuries because for centuries it has been hidden in every society. Yet women have supported and taken care of men everywhere. Indeed, male violence in the family was never even discussed: traditionally it was accepted as quite "natural" that men abused women.

WIN NEWS was one of the first publications to report on violence against women - starting in 1977. It was most difficult to get any information. In the UK reports on wife abuse were published first, followed by the US. Gradually women in other European countries began to publish such information, but it took a long time to get documentation from the developing world. For centuries all information of the ongoing universal abuse of women by men in their families had been suppressed, including by the male-dominated press. From 1977 on WIN NEWS featured a section on violence. Only in the last few years UNIFEM has started a global initiative to stop male violence against women.

Reading these Human Rights Reports on women is a shocking experience: they give a factual account of the horrendous attacks perpetrated by men against women - most often women in their own families. This goes on in every single country - making women and girls into victims, exploited and ruled by unrestrained, vicious male attacks. What is described is a war on women in every single country. Women and girls are attacked, raped and killed in their homes and neighborhoods not by soldiers of an occupying army but most often by their own male family members and husbands.

All this has been going on for centuries with women trying to exist in this violent male jungle - which until quite recently - has been accepted as a "normal" condition of female life and supported by male dominated government institutions including religious institutions such as the Catholic Church and Islam and most other religious organizations -all designed to support male domination.

This year the Reports again confirm the ubiquitousness of male violence. Women everywhere need to organize to resist and stop this horrible scourge by men which is used to support and exert male domination and exploitation and to continue male rule all over the world at enormous costs.

UNIFEM is the first global organization that quite recently has begun in an organized way to not only record male violence but to bring together women all over the world to resist and work together against the ubiquitous violation and exploitation of women by men using violence as a means of control.

UNIFEM is still the only international organization that has taken on this challenge to rid the world of male family violence - we all need to join them. To be sure there are by now many local groups in different countries, but there is almost no government support. The male constructed legal systems make it enormously difficult everywhere to send proven rapists to jail anywhere, let alone wife abusers.

The State Department Reports are to be sure a unique source of information as here male violence and control by force is documented in great detail by a male-dominated government institution that no one can call feminist. As stated in the introduction the reports cover a large number of subjects related to human rights: women are only one small sub-section. They are posted on the Internet by February 25 each year. The printed reports don't come out until September; the most recent one of the year 2000 had more than 2,800 pages in 2 volumes.