Statements and Speeches

Statement by Kemal Dervis on the Occasion of the
International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women

In designating this day the United Nations International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women five years ago, the General Assembly recognized both the high costs of this tragic and widespread human rights violation, and the strength and determination of the global movement to end it.

Violence against women not only devastates lives and fractures communities, but impedes development. While its extent is hard to estimate given it is so widely under-reported, the World Health Organization estimates that 25 per cent of women worldwide will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. No country or society can claim to be free of domestic violence; it cuts across boundaries of culture, class, education, income, ethnicity and age.

Today, violence against women is still a universally tolerated and often unpunished crime. Women are attacked on the street, in the workplace, in the home, while in state custody, and in conflict situations.

Violence that is tolerated in times of peace often intensifies at times of war and armed conflict. For centuries, rape has been used as a weapon of war—to humiliate women and to destroy families and communities. We seldom link the story of girls raped or battered by enemy soldiers and girls raped or battered by friendly soldiers, peace-keepers, or family members. Yet these realities are not so different. The breakdown of law and order, the displacement of people and families generates tensions, frustration, and powerlessness among men that are often manifested in an increased incidence of violence against women.

In October 2000, the Security Council issued a resolution calling on all parties to armed conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of violence in situations of armed conflict.

Today, at the national level, over 45 countries have adopted legislation to outlaw gender-based violence and bring its perpetrators to justice. A wide range of actors – the judiciary, the police, health services, educators, and policy-makers – are being trained and mobilized worldwide, to join in efforts to address gender-based violence.

Large as the problem of violence against women is, real progress is being made by the international community to stop it. In 1993, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women became the first international human rights instrument to deal specifically with violence against women, and the World Conference on Human Rights that same year affirmed that violence against women contravenes human rights norms. Since then, a series UN world conferences, especially the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, have affirmed the critical need to eliminate gender-based violence. Most recently, at the 2005 World Summit, Heads of State and Government emphasized that progress for women is progress for all, and committed to eliminating discrimination and violence against women.

In 1996, the UN General Assembly called for the creation of a UN Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence Against Women, established at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Since then, the Trust Fund has provided over $10 million to 198 initiatives in over 100 countries, generating knowledge and lessons about strategies that work. Yet these resources are not sufficient. This year alone the Trust Fund received over 1000 proposals, but could fund only 24.

Stopping violence against women is too important to remain under-funded. We must commit the resources necessary to scale up the successful strategies the Trust Fund supports every year, to make the leap from ‘good practice’ to standard practice everywhere.