We Are All Guilty

(Originally posted on the Huffington Post)

In the many years I have worked for the promotion of women's human rights, the most frequent question I get is "why?" Why is it that, after so many years of progress in terms of women's access to education and jobs, women still earn less than men in similar position. Why is it that even now, with an all-time high of women serving in Congress, women hold only a third of the seats. Why is it that, in a country that prides itself on its high levels of gender equality, domestic violence continues to injure and kill women every single day. Surely, my interlocutors argue, if we know something is wrong, we can prohibit, punish, and eliminate whatever abhorrent practice we are talking about.

And at the most basic level this is, of course, true: we have the tools the stop the abuse, so why don't we? Reality is a bit more complicated. In my experience, there are three main reasons women and girls continue to be discriminated against.

1. Laws are poorly defined and badly implemented.

Legal protections against discrimination and violence against women are much better now than even just 10 years ago. Even so, many laws carve out massive exemptions and implementation is often inconsistent. Take sexual harassment. While U.S. law contains a solid definition of the practice, it exempts businesses with less than 15 employees, and doesn't provide protection for temporary workers. What, I wonder, is the part-time waitress to do, when her boss insists she unbutton her shirt to attract more customers. Or how about the notion that women deserve equal pay for equal work. The Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, signed into law by Obama in January this year, eliminates the statute of limitations on lawsuits for pay discrimination in the workplace, but still doesn't guarantee equality.

Clearly, there is a need to reexamine the laws we think protect us, and look closely at whether they do the job.

2. Myth and culture are used to justify discrimination.

Culture is used to justify even the most unconscionable abuse. When I did research on rape in Mexico in 2005, government officials shrugged at the mention of incest: "Of course it's wrong, but it's our culture," they would say. Needless to say, I have never met an incest survivor who dismissed their own suffering as "culturally appropriate."

But culture and myths are also used to perpetuate inequality in more subtle ways. In many countries, including the United States, women - more so than men - often tend to be pushed towards careers in care-giving such as nursing and teaching, because, as myth has it, women are naturally nurturing. Critical professions, they still generally don't pay as much as the "harder" alternatives, such as transport and construction, but, as myth continues, women won't have to support themselves, and therefore don't have to make a living wage. In reality, many women head single-parent households.

While these myths persist, equality remains an illusion.

3. Gender stereo-typing may be perpetuated in the home.

While government carries the large share of the responsibility for continued sex discrimination, the reality remains that gender stereotyping is alive and well in the home. Women are still, to a much larger extent than men, expected to cook, clean, and deal with childcare, even when they have a full-time job outside the home. While men's participation in work in the home is often seen as "helping out," women are still saddled with the main responsibility for getting this work done. A 2002 academic study from Northwestern University concluded, among other things, that women do substantively more of the housework than their male partners. In fact, even when American women earn half or more of the joint household income, they have more duties at home than men.

And this unequal burden sharing perpetuates the larger sense of women's servitude and subordination, which can lead to abuse. Bureau of Justice Crime statistics indicate that women are almost five times more likely to be attacked by their intimate partner or spouse than men are. A third of female victims of homicide were killed by their partners, as compared to 5% of male victims of homicide.

So why do women and girls continue to suffer discrimination and abuse? There is no easy answer. Legal protections are incomplete, and only go so far. Myths persist, and culture is used as an excuse. Women themselves internalize the inequality.

But at the end of the day, discrimination continues because we allow it to.

US Women Also Have Human Rights Issues

(Originally posted on the Huffington Post)

On October 10, 2003, after years of abuse at the hands of her former partner, a 35-year-old woman in Hungary decided to seek intervention in a way American women can currently only wish for. The woman, identified as A.T., filed a petition with a United Nations body on women's rights. The body promptly asked her government to prevent further harm while they considered her case. Subsequently, it directed Hungary both to take measures to guarantee her physical and mental health and to ensure protection and justice for all the nation's victims of domestic violence.

The petition, was filed with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, known as CEDAW. It diligently analyzed Hungarian law and court proceedings, and concluded that available remedies both in A.T.'s case and in general were too weak, too slow, and too begrudgingly implemented.

Women living in the United States cannot appeal to CEDAW, though, when their rights are inadequately protected by US law. Why? Because the United States still, almost 30 years after it came into force, has not agreed to be bound by the provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which created the committee.

The Convention is a global treatise on women's equality. It reflects the consensus of the international community on what specific protections and actions states must take to ensure equality between men and women. The treaty has been ratified by 185 UN Member States, placing the United States in the dubious company of Iran, Nauru, Palau, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, and Tonga as the last states that have not ratified it. The convention was signed by President Carter in July 1980, but was not considered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee till 1990. It was favorably voted out of the Foreign Relations Committee twice: once in 1994 and once in 2002. The convention has been awaiting comments from the Justice Department ever since. Senate rules require the treaty to be taken up in Committee again before it goes to full Senate vote.

Opponents of ratification cite a general opposition to international treaties as infringing upon national sovereignty. But they also contend that the convention includes provisions that are offensive to "American" culture. They contend that ratification would force the United States government to provide abortion on demand, to intrude in family situations and to legalize sex work.

The first argument is sometimes used to oppose the very concept of international human rights. Such arguments maintain that every nation is free to pursue whatever policies it wants, even slavery and apartheid. Such arguments are hard to defend in the context of modern international relations. Perhaps more to the point, the very act of ratifying a treaty, and thereby agreeing to uphold universally recognized standards, is a classic exercise of national sovereignty - a declaration that a nation believes in and will uphold these standards.
With regard to the clash between US culture and the specific provisions of the Convention, the opposition is also wrong:

Abortion. The CEDAW Convention protects a woman's equal right to life and health, and to decide on the number and spacing of her children. The full protection of these rights will in some cases require access to abortion services, and will also require the state to provide such services to some. The United States is already bound by international human rights commitments in this regard through its ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and through its membership of the Organization of American States. The ratification of the CEDAW Convention would not substantively alter existing obligations.
Intrusion of privacy. The CEDAW Convention requires the nations to end practices based on the idea of the inferiority of either of the sexes. This provision is key, and indeed Human Rights Watch research shows that even the best policies are not effective if they are undermined by existing prejudices. Moreover, US federal law on violence against women, education, and other issues, already includes the need for government oversight of what at some point was seen as private matters.

Sex work. The CEDAW Convention contains a provision requiring states to take all measures "to suppress exploitation of prostitution of women." Human Rights Watch's research on this issue indicates that the criminalization of women involved in sex work tends to expose them to specific types of exploitation--including extortion by police. Various countries have fulfilled this particular CEDAW obligation in many ways, including decriminalizing sex work while clamping down on trafficking, providing health care options for sex workers and investigating police abuse.

Back in Hungary, since A.T.'s case was filed in 2003, the government has both held awareness-raising sessions for police officers about domestic violence and developed a more stringent mandate for police to deal with domestic violence. Moreover, the CEDAW Committee's analysis and recommendations have provided much needed fuel to domestic groups seeking to reform the law. Women in the United States should be able to benefit from this kind of support too. The Obama administration and the US Senate should make ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women a priority.

Ending Impunity for Rape

(Originally published in the Washington Post)

I have a project for Joseph Biden and Hillary Clinton to work on together: ending impunity for rape. Rape-conviction rates are appallingly low across the globe. I don't mean only in countries that many would think of as lacking good justice systems: Conviction rates hover just above 10 percent of complaints filed in the United States and are a measly 6 percent in Britain. Because the vast majority of rape victims don't file complaints, it does not take precise studies or statistics to conclude that most sexual assaults in most parts of the world end without punishment for the perpetrators. 

Over the years, in the course of my work at Human Rights Watch, I have spoken with dozens of rape victims around the world, read rape-related court files from many countries and scrutinized legislation. Although most people agree that rape is bad, legislation and government action on sexual crimes are not always that clear. Indeed, rape seems to be graded on a scale from "unconscionable" through "bad luck" to "much deserved." Exactly where a particular incident falls on that scale often seems to depend on factors that include family status, sobriety and ethnicity. In all too many cases, laws and judicial systems have determined that forced sex is not really rape.

To understand this better, consider this short list of successful defenses:

It's not rape if she is my wife. Marriage is perhaps the most commonly used cover for rape, so internalized that many women themselves seem to accept it. When I asked a woman in the Dominican Republic in 2004 if her husband ever forced her to have sex, she shrugged and said: "I guess he is a bit violent. He rapes me at times." Unfortunately, this atrocity is often sanctioned by law. Some countries, such as Ethiopia and Indonesia, define rape as something that happens only outside of marriage. In many others, rape is defined more broadly but is interpreted by courts and police as excluding marital rape. The logic can be applied after the fact, too: Several countries, including Brazil and Libya, exonerate a perpetrator of rape if he agrees to marry the victim.

It's not rape if she is my daughter. Though unconscionable to many, incest is seen in some countries as either unfortunate or not all that forced. In Mexico, for example, the rape of a teenage girl by her father is defined as voluntary until it is proved otherwise. Under most state criminal codes in Mexico, incest is considered a crime against the family, not against the physical integrity of the victim, and the underage victim is initially considered as much a criminal as the adult perpetrator.

It's not rape if she was drunk. Over the years, Human Rights Watch and other organizations have documented how prosecutors and courts are likely to treat testimony by rape victims with more suspicion than testimony regarding other types of crimes. Routinely, women are aggressively questioned about whether the intercourse was really involuntary, whether the victim somehow provoked or deserved the assault, and whether the assault even occurred. The mistrust is particularly pronounced when the victim admits to being anything other than completely sober before or during the attack. The frenzied media coverage in England last year of a controversial proposal to change the burden of proof in rape cases appeared to perpetuate the belief, which seemed to be widely held, that a drunk rape victim "had it coming."

It's not rape if my culture mandates intercourse. When the presumed next president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, stood trial on rape charges in 2006, he bolstered his defense with references to tradition and culture. Zuma testified that his accuser had signaled her arousal by wearing a knee-length skirt to his house and sitting with her legs crossed. He said that it is unacceptable in Zulu culture not to proceed to a sexual encounter once a woman is aroused. Zuma was acquitted, but regardless of the outcome, it is troubling that a high-level politician in any country, much less a country with epidemic levels of sexual violence, peddles the notion that women may mean yes even when they say no.

Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton can change this. During his time in the Senate, Biden has championed draft legislation that would make violence against women a foreign relations priority for the United States, through, for example, supporting legislative reform abroad and a victim-centered approach to violence. As a senator, Clinton supported this legislation. As vice president and secretary of state, Biden and Clinton could make central to U.S. foreign policy the fight against perpetrators' getting away with rape and other forms of violence against women. They should start by creating a coordinating office at the State Department to build on this work. Rape is bad no matter what country it takes place in, whatever the age or marital status of the victim. There is no other way to look at it.

Justice Is Possible

(Originally posted on RH Reality Check)

It's easy to get discouraged if you support women's right to decide over their bodies and choices, what with the blanket ban on abortion in Nicaragua passed last week, the imposition of demonstrably harmful "abstinence-only" sexual education in the United States and elsewhere, and the lack of access to comprehensive reproductive and sexual health care for women generally. But this month I am getting a much-needed injection of "it's possible."

I am not talking about the U.S. elections, though some electoral campaigns have given me hope that not all politicians have sold out to focus group research.

I am talking about Verónica Cruz.

Verónica Cruz is the co-founder and leader of the organization "Las Libres" (The Free Women) in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. She is also one of only three recipients of this year's Human Rights Watch annual award for exceptional human rights activists. Part of the prize is a three-week speaking tour of the United States and Canada, where I, as her Human Rights Watch host, get to accompany her. Our trip only started Monday, but I am already energized by her enthusiasm and inherent belief that justice is possible. Even for women. Even for poor women. Even for poor, indigenous, illiterate women.

And even though Verónica and Las Libres work in a hostile environment, their results are as up-lifting as their cause is depressing.

Las Libres is the only organization in the state of Guanajuato that provides legal aid and integral health services for victims of sexual violence. In Guanajuato, as elsewhere in Mexico, sexual violence is rampant and mostly unchecked. By the government's own conservative estimates, a woman or girl is raped every four minutes in Mexico, and more than 90 percent of rape victims don't ever report the crime committed against them to the authorities.

Many women and girls know from experience that they are likely to be aggressively questioned if they go to the police or to the public prosecutors. When I investigated this issue in Mexico last year, I found appalling cases of public officials actively mistreating or summarily dismissing rape victims, even before a claim was filed. Moreover, of the 10 percent rape cases that do get reported, few get properly investigated, and even fewer end with a conviction of the perpetrator. This impunity is a further reason for rape victims not to want to report a crime: if there is no final conviction, what is the point of exposing yourself to abusive police officers and prosecutors?

But it's even worse. Rape victims who have gotten pregnant as a result of the rape bear the brunt of the mistreatment and distrust. This is closely linked with the politically touchy issue of abortion. Abortion is generally illegal in Mexico, and some states still prosecute women for having had abortions. At the same time, all 32 state penal codes include exceptions to that general criminalization. The only exception that is valid in all of Mexico is legal abortion for rape victims. This means that rape victims in theory have a right to a safe, legal, and free abortion. However, pregnant rape victims who ask authorities for help to obtain such an abortion meet with multiple obstacles, both in the justice and health systems, ultimately impeding access.

In fact, in the state of Guanajuato, not one single rape victims has been granted access to a legal abortion by the authorities during the 30 years the penal code exception has been on the books.

Luckily, rape victims in Guanajuato now have somewhere else to go with their plight: Verónica Cruz and Las Libres. Las Libres provides the mental and physical health services the state should be providing but doesn't. Las Libres convinces women, through sustained support and consciousness-raising, that impunity is fought with the law: if rape victims agree to report the rape, Las Libres will provide them with the necessary legal aid. And if rape victims are pregnant and find they want to terminate the pregnancy, they are given the choice they are legally entitled to.

I have seen Verónica's presence in a rape victim's home change almost tangible despair to hope in a matter of minutes, just from Verónica's compassionate support and direct assistance. "Women, and in particular poor women, are used to thinking that they don't have a right to justice," Verónica told me today. "We show them it's not true. Justice is a human right. And it is possible."

Of course, victims of sexual assault still face a number of obstacles in accessing justice and health services in Guanajuato as elsewhere in Mexico. But with Verónica's and Las Libres' sustained pressure, the government can no longer ignore their obligation to improve this situation. And this is already a big step forward.