APWLD’s First Engagement with the Issue of Sexuality
Yamini
APWLD Programme Officer
Violence against Women & Women’s Human Rights

The week of the 25th of July, 2004 was the high point of the Violence against Women (VAW) programme of APWLD. Along with Komnas Perempuan (The Indonesian National Commission on VAW) and Forum Asia, APWLD organised a two-day Study Workshop on ‘Sexuality and Violence against Women’ on 25-26 July, followed by a two-day Consultation on ‘Sexuality and Violence against Women: Access to Justice’ with the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women (UNSR-VAW) on 27-28 July. Both meetings took place in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The study workshop and the consultation served as a critical forum for enhancing APWLD’s understanding and sharpening its conceptual clarity on issues of Sexuality and Violence against Women, the end goal of which was to strengthen APWLD’s work and activism on violence and other issues of women’s rights. The consultation focused specifically on issues of sexuality and violence against women in the context of access to justice. A major thrust of the Consultation was utilising the Special Rapporteur Mechanism of the UN for our advocacy. The study workshop was APWLD’s own space for learning about the debates and issues on sexuality and violence against women.

A quick look at critical forms of violence against women in Asia Pacific reveals that most of the forms of violence against women are either overtly sexual in nature (commonly known as sexual violence) or are targeted at their sexuality (now called “sexualised violence”). Acid throwing on women in Bangladesh; honour crimes in Pakistan, Turkey and several other countries; virginity tests, stoning of women in Afghanistan; the issues of comfort women; female genital mutilation which is practised in parts of Asia are all related to women’s sexuality. These violations, in addition to existing violence against women such as sexual abuse, sexual harassment, rape make a compelling link between sexuality and violence against women.

At the same time, addressing sexuality only from the violence or disease perspective is not a holistic understanding of the term. The Study Workshop went beyond just looking at sexuality from the perspective of violence against women and explored issues around the need for positive affirmations of sexuality, rights of sexual minorities, the socio-political construct of sexuality and male construct of sexuality among others.

Sexuality is one of the central elements in the struggle of women’s rights. As a site of female oppression and a tool of patriarchal control, one needs to engage with the issue of sexuality as part of the feminist commitment to challenge all sites of power and prejudice. Some of the issues that were discussed in the study workshop were: how women’s bodies and their sexuality become markers of culture and grounds for constructing national and communal identities; at the same time, it is important to recognise that sexuality is not just about ‘the body’ as sexuality encompasses spiritual, social, moral and several other domains of our lives as well; how sexual ethics as per most religions are premised to secure that degree of female virtue without which the patriarchal family becomes impossible and the norm of heterosexuality and its impacts on lesbians and other sexual minorities.

The Study Workshop was followed by the Consultation with Dr. Yakin Erturk, the new UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women. Women from different parts of Asia-Pacific made presentations on the issues of violence against women and access to justice spanning the entire range-from violence within the household and the community, to violence by the state, and violence within a state to the trans-national arena. Experiences of women in accessing justice at the community, national and international levels were discussed. A special session on HIV/AIDS and links with the issue of sexuality and violence against women was organised to feed into the UN Special Rapporteur’s report to the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2005, which will focus on violence against women and HIV/AIDS.

Several critical issues emerged from the consultation. The issue of cultural relativism, where respect for culture should stop and respect for women’s rights prevail, emerged several times. It was also emphasised that while situations of armed conflict heighten women’s vulnerability to violence and reduce their chances of access to justice, end of the conflict does not necessarily stop violence experienced by women. It was also pointed out that the militarism and fundamentalisms are interrelated and fundamentalisms often emerge in response to militarism or are fuelled by it. In regard to HIV/AIDS, a participant pointed out that condoms do not protect women from HIV, rights do. The success stories of criminalisation of marital rape in Nepal and reform of penal codes in Turkey were also discussed but the UN Special Rapporteur pointed out that plural legal systems were identified as one of the main obstacles in implementation of the international law for women’s rights.

The consultation was followed by a national meeting on violence against women among Indonesian groups nationwide organised by Komnas Perempuan on July 29, 2004. Several women’s groups from Indonesia attended the meeting and made specific presentations on critical issues on violence against women to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women. For a country torn in different kinds of conflict, this meeting was specifically critical to draw attention to the increasing violence against women in the context of ethnic conflicts and rise of religious and nationalist fundamentalisms in the country.

The UN Special Rapporteur found all the meetings most informative, providing her with much information and analyses about the different issues on sexuality and violence against women in Asia Pacific. One of the outcomes of the meeting was that the Special Rapporteur proposed that the focus of her report to UN Commission on Human Rights in 2006 will be on ‘Access to Justice’. It is hoped that several issues raised to the UN Special Rapporteur during the Consultation and in the national meeting would be included in her report to the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Consultation with UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women
Asia-Pacific Women call for justice for sexual violence

Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Forum Asia and Komnas Perempuan organised a four-day consultation with the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women from 25-28 July 2004 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Women from around 18 different countries in Asia Pacific attended the consultation. More than 40 women human rights activists voiced their concern regarding the lack of access to justice for violence relating to women’s sexuality. Despite advances in recognising violence against women as a violation of women’s human rights at the international level, violence against Asia Pacific women continues unabated.

The situation becomes particularly grim when women’s sexuality is targeted since sexuality is at the core of our beings. Targeting women’s sexuality is done by both state and non state actors. Representatives from Burma, East Timor, Aceh and the northeastern states of India shared continuing perpetration of violence including sexual violence by state actors. In their recent report, the Karen Women’s Organisation, an ethnic group from Burma, has documented 125 cases of sexual violence by the military regime in Karen State of Burma from 1998 to 2004. As shared by the representative from Burma “this is just the tip of the iceberg. Use of rape as a weapon by the military dictatorship continues in conflict areas throughout Burma.”

Isha Hamdani, from Pakistan said that “Women also face violence in their homes and communities and often by intimate partners. Since most of these crimes are committed in the name of ‘honour’, the perpetrator almost always goes unpunished.” As sexuality is one of the most basic tools for controlling women, issues like acid throwing, honour crimes, stoning, abductions of wives or female family members by armed conflict groups, female genital mutilation, marital rape were identified by the participants as critical emerging concerns in the region. The growing militarisation and “war on terror”, rising power of neo-conservative right wing forces and globalisation worsen the situation.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Dr. Yakin Erturk, said that “There has been references made to “Asian values” and I want to understand this more. Cultural or religious practices that violate women’s rights should not be allowed and perpetrators given preferential treatment on the grounds of respecting culture or religion.”

Asia Pacific women call for justice, including adequate legal redress, effective judicial processes to bring perpetrators of sexual violence to justice and end the culture of impunity in the region. The urgent call for the states is not just immediate implementation of laws but also ensuring that these acts of violence stop.

The UN Special Rapporteur also supported the call of the Asia Pacific for states in the region to create a regional human rights mechanism and more effective national human rights system for state accountability.