---

Everyone should fight
global domestic violence

As this year's Domestic Violence Awareness Month has come to a close, it is important to remember that violence against women is a global pandemic which merits all our attention every day of the year.

Long regarded as a private matter, domestic violence is a pattern of behavior used to establish power and control over another person through fear and intimidation, often including the threat or use of violence, when one person believes they are entitled to control another. Domestic violence is not isolated within any particular group. Such violence occurs across lines of class, race, sexual identity and national origin. In all cultures, domestic violence is most commonly carried out by men against women.

Domestic violence takes many forms in the world. From acid burning, dowry-related violence and "honor" killings to rape, battery and psychological abuse, women are all too often subjected to the basest forms of abuse and humiliation by the people closest to them. Such torture of women in rooted in a global culture that denies women equal rights with men and legitimizes the violent appropriation of women's bodies for individual gratification or political ends.

Amnesty International believes that not only is domestic violence a crime, but a human rights abuse and a form of torture. The United Nations Convention Against Torture, signed by President Reagan, defines torture as an act by which severe pain or suffering, physical or mental, is inflicted on a person for a purpose such as punishment or intimidation. By applying the legally accepted definition of torture to the domestic violence women face every day, the international community is increasingly recognizing that violence against women is not only a human rights violation, but constitutes a form of torture as well, and states have an obligation to prevent, investigate and punish such violence.

In March of this year, Amnesty International launched a global Stop Violence Against Women campaign to highlight the responsibility of the state, community and individual to take action to stop violence against women and girls and end impunity for the perpetrators. Amnesty's research to date shows no reduction in this phenomenon. Rather, we are currently witnessing horrific levels of violence committed with impunity against women and girls in many conflict-affected countries.

Amnesty International's 2004 report "It's in Our Hands" calls violence against women the greatest human rights scandal of our time. According to a study by the American Psychological Association, one out of every three women in the United States experiences at least one physical assault by a partner during adulthood. At least 20 percent of women worldwide have been physically or sexually assaulted. In India, more than 40 percent of married women report being kicked, slapped or sexually abused, and in Egypt, 35 percent of women report being beaten by their husbands. Numbers like these surge in countries with civil conflicts since rape has become an all-too-common weapon of war, and women and children have increasingly become targets to terrorize communities.

Since 1993, in the Mexican border towns of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, at least 370 women have been abducted and murdered. Of these, at least 137 were sexually assaulted and victims of other forms of torture. Most of the victims were very poor and very young, often kidnapped on their way home from work in sweatshops, of which many are owned by U.S. companies. Amnesty International is gravely concerned that the Mexican authorities seem to drag their feet solving these cases and that local authorities have often been quoted as blaming the victims for dressing improperly.

Amnesty International believes that the power to stop violence against women is in all our hands. Violence against women happens domestically on many levels: in the home, in our streets, in legislative and judicial bodies, and in our social structures and norms. The greatest human rights scandal of our time will continue to plague our societies until we shift from silent tolerance to active intolerance of violence against women.

---