Statement for the 47th session of the Commission on the Status of from the European Women’s Lobby on the theme of Violence Against Women
14 January 2003
The European Women’s Lobby (EWL) welcomes the fact that the CSW will review the implementation of policies and actions taken to address violence against women over the past decade and states the following:
The European Women’s Lobby recalls that the Beijing Platform for Action clearly states that violence against women is the result of the historically unequal power relations between women and men, and notes that over the past decade the gender dimension of violence against women is being eroded and replaced by neutral concepts that describe the issue in terms of family dynamics (domestic violence) and/or market policies (prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation). The EWL calls on the EU and the UN to explicitly recognise that violence against women is the direct result of unequal power relations between women and men in all public statements, policies and programmes.
The EWL notes that while many commitments to address violence against women have been made both at regional (EU) and international (UN) level over the past decade, the issue of follow-up and monitoring has been seriously neglected as systematic data and statistics on all forms of violence against women are still lacking. Systematic analysis of the impact of male violence on women experiencing multiple discrimination as a result of the intersection of gender, ethnic origins, sexual orientation, colour, disability and/or religion is also lacking. The EWL calls for greater use of existing mechanisms such as national reports on the implementation of the CEDAW Convention and calls for guidelines to facilitate data on violence against women for those sections of the report that are relevant. The EWL invites both the EU and the UN to consider the work already done in this area and especially its proposal on indicators to measure progress, to determine gaps and to identify and address emerging issues in combating violence against women.
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