The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: Article 4(c) and Article 4(d)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/14
Article 4
States should condemn violence against women and should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination. States should pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating violence against women and, to this end, should:
( c ) Exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and, in accordance with national legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by private persons;
( d ) Develop penal, civil, labour and administrative sanctions in domestic legislation to punish and redress the wrongs caused to women who are subjected to violence; women who are subjected to violence should be provided with access to the mechanisms of justice and, as provided for by national legislation, to just and effective remedies for the harm that they have suffered; States should also inform women of their rights in seeking redress through such mechanisms;
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993) or the Declaration states the rights of women extend into not only the inability or restrictions on the use – or abuse – of custom and religion to impose themselves on women or become justifications for the restrictions on women but also the details around investigation of cases and sanctions, too.
With respect to the victims of the gender-based violence, more often women in sexual and physical forms, Article 4(c) stipulates the need to exercise proper methodology and procedure when investigating the punishment of the acts of Violence Against Women or VAW.
The article subsection distinguishes between the governmental harms, as in Decree 770, and the individual violent perpetrator. Nonetheless, both remain actors or agents in the VAW perpetrated in history right into the present.
If we look into the various sanctions listed – “penal, civil, labour and administration,” the proper redress does not get listed; no specification mention of the forms in which the redress will take, which, supposedly or one may assume, will be determined by the proper legal apparatus and judicial body.
The indication within the subsection is that there will be a series of mechanisms in the justice system of which a woman, or women, can utilize in order to garner some form of retributive justice for themselves. Some semblance of a recompense for the damages.
Although, and of course, these underly potential other problems seen in sexual abuse cases with monetary settlements. The judicial system assumes and the culture permits the use of money to cover trauma.
Trauma does not disappear with the inclusion of finances. Indeed, it may take more than this to simply paper over the trauma, as the historical record shows the case file and financial payout but not the internal dialogue and chaos that ensued from the sexual or other violence perpetrated against the woman, or women.
The national legislation will stipulate – so some national independent of justice and fairness for the payback via the law – the level and kind of recompense for the VAW crime. Another important part, as a sendoff to Article 4(d), is the inclusion of knowledge and education as mandatory to be provided for women in order to know about and properly enforce their fundamental human rights.
–One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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