ENDING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Oxfam GB was founded in 1942. It is a development, relief, and campaigning agency dedicated to finding lasting solutions to poverty and suffering around the world. It believes that every human being is entitled to a life of dignity and opportunity, and it works with others worldwide to make this become a reality. From its base in Oxford, England, Oxfam GB publishes and distributes a wide range of books and other resource materials for development and relief workers, researchers and campaigners, educational establishments, and the general public, as part of its programme of advocacy, education, and communications. Oxfam GB is a member of Oxfam International, a group of 12 agencies of diverse cultures and languages, which share a commitment to working for an end to injustice and poverty – both in long-term development work and at times of crisis. www.oxfam.org.uk ENDING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: A Challenge for Development and Humanitarian Work Francine Pickup with Suzanne Williams and Caroline Sweetman First published by Oxfam GB in 2001 This edition transferred to print-on-demand in 2007 © Oxfam GB 2001 ISBN 978-0-85598-438-4 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. All rights reserved. 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Francine Pickup would like to dedicate this book to Livio Zilli and Suzanne Williams Contents Preface xi Suzanne Williams Acknowledgements xvii List of abbreviations xix Introduction 1 PART 1 Exploring violence against women 1 Explaining violence against women as a development concern 11 1.1 Defining violence against women 11 1.2 The causes and the perpetrators 18 1.3 Poverty and violence against women: exploring the link 23 1.4 Some useful concepts from gender and development 28 1.5 Supporting women’s empowerment and avoiding violent backlash 33 1.6 Summary and implications for development organisations 44 2 Human rights and development responses to violence against women 46 2.1 Human rights approaches to violence against women 47 2.2 An integrated response: human rights and development 63 2.3 Summary and implications for development organisations 74 3 The prevalence, forms, and impacts of violence against women 76 3.1 Problems in estimating the prevalence of violence against women 76 3.2 Forms of violence against women 78 3.3 The impact of violence upon women 96 3.4 Summary and implications for development organisations 109 4 The contexts in which violence against women occurs 111 4.1 Violence and social institutions 112 4.2 Violence against women in times of change and crisis 125 4.3 Summary and implications for development organisations 149 vii Ending Violence against Women PART 2 Strategies for challenging violence against women 5 Direct support to the survivors of violence 153 5.1 What are the options available to women? 154 5.2 Creating a safe space 160 5.3 Supporting women’s access to law and justice 175 5.4 Supporting women to overcome the mental and physical impacts of violence 178 5.5 Long-term strategies: creating a livelihood 188 5.6 The right to individual petition under the Women’s Convention 194 5.7 Planning support interventions for women survivors of violence 196 5.8 Summary and implications for development organisations 199 6 Challenges to violent men 201 6.1 Why work with male perpetrators? 203 6.2 Direct challenges to violent men 205 6.3 Ending violence through fostering women’s empowerment 210 6.4 ‘Healing the abuser’: working with male perpetrators 213 6.5 Summary and implications for development workers 227 7 Challenging attitudes and beliefs 229 7.1 Raising awareness and ending stigma 231 7.2 Challenging attitudes by recording violence against women 232 7.3 Challenging attitudes by harnessing the media 241 7.4 Challenging attitudes through public education and information campaigns 245 7.5 Group work to build ‘critical consciousness’ of violence against women 251 7.6 Summary and implications for development organisations 260 8 Challenging the State 262 8.1 Strengthening legal responses to violence against women 263 8.2 Building the capacity of state workers to challenge violence 272 8.3 Achieving attitudinal change at the level of the State 276 8.4 Strengthening state provision of health and welfare 276 8.5 Lobbying for state provision of shelters 278 8.6 Transforming state-instigated research 279 8.7 Training of state officials 279 8.8 State involvement in education campaigns 285 8.9 NGO lobbying of governments to effect change 287 8.10 Summary and implications for development organisations 291 viii Contents 9 Conclusion: planning for freedom from violence 293 9.1 A rights-based approach to development 294 9.2 Strategies for tackling violence against women 296 9.3 Identifying trends 299 9.4 Policy implications for international NGOs 301 9.5 Ending violence against women? 305 Appendix 1 307 The three phases of Rape Trauma Syndrome Appendix 2 309 The KwaZulu Natal Programme for the Survivors of Violence framework for understanding the effects of political violence and responding to it Notes 313 Bibliography 323 Index 351 ix Preface Suzanne Williams Emerging from the Silence Ending violence against women is one of Oxfam’s priorities. It is a central strategy within Oxfam’s overall goal of promoting gender equity throughout its international programme, and it is central to Oxfam’s mandate to relieve poverty and suffering. This prioritisation is the fruit of a long, although often obscure, history of Oxfam’s support of work to address violence against women around the world. It has often been obscure because it is in the nature of the issue of violence against women to be hidden, to be silenced, and to be encircled by fear, shame, and violence. It is a difficult and dangerous area in which to work. Located as it is, in the majority of cases, within the family or household, it has been regarded as a private and domestic issue, inhabiting terrain where development agencies have feared to tread. If anything, it fell within the realm of the charitable and welfare projects that characterised much of Oxfam’s programme in the 1950s and 1960s. Oxfam’s early support to community organisation and development, legal education and legal aid, and women’s groups and organisations, is likely to have had an impact on the extent of violence in the lives and relationships of women and men that has never been documented. It has not been documented because it has only relatively recently appeared in the language of development aid, and been regarded as a legitimate development concern. As has been recorded by Oxfam staff, a focus on women’s particular rights was felt to be divisive and potentially alienating to partners who did not themselves raise the issue, particularly in the context of community-based or political organisations striving for social justice. So while it may well be that Oxfam has indirectly and unknowingly contributed to attempts to stop or lessen the incidence of violence against women, it is likely that interventions were supported which may have brought about – or worsened – the violence meted out to women. A key issue that is addressed in this book is that unless development and relief agencies xi Ending Violence against Women are aware of the ways in which women are subordinated within their beneficiary group, and take measures to address it, their interventions will probably exacerbate it. One of the earliest projects in the organisation’s archives dealing directly with one of the many aspects of violence against women was supported by Oxfam in Brazil from 1971 to 1983. The Centro Educacional Bem Me Quer was a social and educational centre for prostitutes and their children, founded by three social science graduates in the town of Aracaju, in northeast Brazil, in 1969. Oxfam funded a day care centre for the children. At the time of writing up the first grant, the Oxfam Representative referred to it as ‘pioneering’ work, and wrote, ‘This, I believe, might appear an unusual project for Oxfam to support.