Women, Peace And Security E-News August 2017

Editorial: Ensuring Accountability for Gender-Based Violence: One Step Forward with CEDAW General Recommendation 35 
By Patrizia Scannella, Director of WILPF’s Human Rights Programme

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Dalia Leinarte, Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), addresses the opening meeting of the sixty-first session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). (Photo: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas)

On 14 July 2017 the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) adopted General Recommendation No. 35 (GR35) on gender-based violence against women.
 
Twenty-five years after General Recommendation No. 19 (GR19), which historically identified gender-based violence as a form of discrimination and violation of women’s human rights, GR35 further strengthens understanding of systemic obstacles, affirming gender-based violence against women as a "social - rather than individual - problem, requiring comprehensive responses, beyond specific events, individual perpetrators and victims/survivors".
 
The holistic approach of GR35 builds on WILPF recommendations to the CEDAW Committee that gender-based violence should be recognised as part of a continuum of violence,  based on militarism, violent masculinities and a political economy that fuels war.  WILPF contributed to the development of GR35 by making a submission to the draft update focused on three main areas to strengthen this holistic approach:  (a) political economy of war: the impact of the militarisation on gender-based violence; (b) arms transfers: the impact of arms transfers on gender-based violence; (c) states parties’ extraterritorial obligations: state and non-state accountability for gender-based violence.
 
WILPF research shows the importance of preventing gender-based violence by addressing both state and non-state institutions, which valorise violence over non-violence and invest in and allow transfers of arms through the systems of militarisation. Our shadow reports to the CEDAW Committee for reviews of Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and France show how weapon transfers facilitate and exacerbate gender-based violence or violence against women in other countries, in violation of the human rights obligations that extend beyond state borders. The WILPF shadow report to the CEDAW Committee for review of Ukraine also shows how austerity measures that are part of lending conditionalities by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have a disproportionate impact on women, including by contributing to the feminisation of poverty, the deepening of gender inequalities, and around survival sex, freedom of movement and access to justice.
 
Reflecting our recommendations, the CEDAW Committee explicitly recognises in GR35 that violent masculinities, political economies of war and proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALW) contribute to the explicit or implicit social acceptance of gender-based violence against women and the widespread impunity for it, including in developed countries, where women continue to face violence even outside of recognised conflict situations. The Committee further draws attention to the fact that "significant reductions in public spending, often as part of 'austerity measures' following economic and financial crises, further weaken the state responses", adding that "in the context of shrinking democratic spaces and consequent deterioration of the rule of law, all these factors allow for the pervasiveness of gender-based violence against women and lead to a culture of impunity".
 
Building on the Committee’s growing jurisprudence on the need for Member States to robustly regulate arms transfers and address arms proliferation, GR35 recommends that Member States address "factors that heighten women’s risk of exposure to serious forms of gender-based violence, such as accessibility and availability of firearms, including their exportation […]". It is significant that the Committee included this element in GR35, since accessibility and availability of firearms can facilitate or exacerbate gender-based violence.
 
GR 35 further recommends national action that prioritises Sustainable Goals 5 (on gender equality) and 16 (on peaceful and inclusive societies) as part of gender responsive and civil society-inclusive implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As WILPF has brought attention to at this year’s High Level Political Forum, this will be particularly important in addressing SDG trade-offs in a way that promotes policy coherence based on women’s human rights commitments.

WILPF welcomes GR35 as an authoritative guidance on implementation of Member States’ obligations under CEDAW. GR35 is an important tool for advocacy, including on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.
 
It is necessary to utilise this tool to continue holding Member States accountable.