Next week Oscar Pistorius is to be released from prison and into house arrest after serving just 11 months of a five-year sentence for shooting and killing his partner, Reeva Steenkamp. Sadly, the only thing that makes this case unusual is the high profile of the perpetrator.
Violence against women is a global problem and it’s particularly acute in South Africa, where a woman is killed by her partner every eight hours. Globally, figures show that, when a woman is murdered, in more than a third of cases she was killed by their partner. In South Africa, that rises to more than half. One study claimed that the country has the highest reported rate of women murdered by shooting in a country not engaged in war.
Behind every statistic are individual women and girls whose names and stories will never be mentioned by the media or spark a public outcry. Viewed collectively, those individual cases reveal a grim pattern of low conviction rates, short sentences, early release, and survivor-blaming from state officials.
A study by the South African Medical Research Council comparing prevalence and patterns of partner violence across South Africa in 1999 and 2009 found that in 10 years there was no evidence of improvement in police investigation of cases.
The message that violence against women isn’t something to be taken seriously allows a culture of impunity to flourish. It prevents women and girls from coming forward to seek justice because they have seen the system fail so many others, creating a vicious circle of silence.
Governments have a human rights obligation to tackle violence against women and girls. This includes delivering effective prosecution and punishment, coupled with efforts to prevent violence and support survivors. Changes within the justice system aren’t enough. Violence against women and girls is deeply rooted in gender inequality, unequal power, and dominant ideals of manhood that support violence and control over women. To end abuse, governments must challenge individual attitudes and behaviours, and ultimately change social norms.
This may sound like a tall order, but it can be done and is – just not, on the whole, by governments. Womankind research has highlighted the work of several women’s rights organisations that are successfully delivering work to prevent violence against women and girls, including empowering women in their communities and convening community conversations.
States must also ensure female survivors can access quality services to respond to both short- and long-term needs and protect women from further violence. The UN has stated that, where possible, services should be run by “independent and experienced women’s non-governmental organisations providing gender-specific, empowering and comprehensive support to women survivors of violence, based on feminist principles”.
However, these organisations are critically underfunded. In the UK alone, Women’s Aid reported that in 2012 they were forced to turn away 320 women, just under 9% of those seeking refuge, due to lack of space. In 2011, a global survey of 1,119 women’s rights organisations from more than 140 countries, conducted by the Association of Women’s Rights in Development, found that only one-tenth of the organisations received funding from bilateral, national governments and international NGOs and only 3% from corporate funds.
Women’s rights organisations around the world carry out life-saving work every day, and they have the expertise to stop violence before it starts. With resources and political will, with commitment from governments to meet their human rights obligations and take violence against women seriously, the poisonous circle of silence and impunity can be broken.
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Bethan Cansfield is Womankind Worldwide’s policy and advocacy manager
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