I want to congratulate the NYSCADV on its 30^th anniversary and thank you for the opportunity to speak and dialogue with you at this historic conference. Coincidentally, I am entering my 30^th year working in human rights.

Amnesty International is using a human rights framework in our international Stop Violence Against Women Campaign.  Why are we doing this?

Human rights constitute a value system and a system of norms established by the international community that assumes the inherent dignity and equality of every human being.  Human rights are an evolving body of international law beginning with the UDHR and the treaties and declarations that are derived from it.  These agreements require governments to ensure that the conditions necessary for all people to fully enjoy their rights are met.  The UDHR states, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights Article 1.  Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person, Article 3; No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, Article 5.  All of these principles are fundamental to the protection of women and girls against violence.

Human rights are the expression of what is required to be fully human, for human dignity. They are not dependent on recognition by an external authority or a reward for certain behavior or status such as citizen or property owner, being a man or being a white person.  They belong to all human beings equally. 

Human rights are universal. They are held equally by everyone.  This means that governments are obligated to respect, protect, and fulfill your human rights regardless of who you are, where you were born, your skin color, economic class, ethnicity, sex or language.

Government may not discriminate arbitrarily on grounds of race, sex, age, ethnicity, nationality and increasingly sexual orientation and disability or other status.

Violence in the home is a global epidemic.  Most of the time, a woman's greatest risk of violence is from someone she knows. Domestic violence takes many forms, from murder, beatings, rape, psychological abuse, to acid burning, dowry-related violence and so-called "honor" killings.

One of the achievements of women's rights activists has been to demonstrate that violence against women is a human rights violation. This changes the perception of violence against women from a private matter to one of public concern and means that public authorities are required to take action.

Domestic violence is a violation of a woman's human rights to physical integrity, to liberty, to be free from torture, and all too often her very right to stay alive.

There are advantages to the human rights framework.  Framing violence against women, in this case, domestic violence, as a human rights issue creates a common language for the work on anti-violence activists and facilitates global and regional networks.  These networks have already accomplished a great deal in the US for survivors of violence and a great deal has yet to be done.  Globally programs, projects and networks to address, combat and prevent violence against women have flourished over the past decades, working to get laws in place and get them implemented, get safe shelters built, and end public attitudes that condone violence.

The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against women which was approved by the General Assembly clearly states that non state or private actor violence against women is a human rights abuse that governments have an obligation  to prevent, investigate and punish with due diligence.  The standard of due diligence is a way to describe the action and effort that a government must demonstrate to fulfill its responsibility to protect people from abuses of their rights. 

Examples of the range of measures should be used to ensure that rights are respected, protected and fulfilled, include, in part, that laws must be in place, officials must be trained to identify the violence as a crime, handle it without bias in courts and elsewhere, with equal justice for women.  There must be compensation, redress and adequate treatment for the victims of violence. Government must make efforts to publicize zero tolerance for violence.   All these obligations are intrinsic to international human rights norms and agreements.

Violence against women has been recognized by international treaties and courts as a manifestation of discrimination against women and a means of continuing women's subordinate status in societies.   Typically, the gender discrimination that women face is combined with other forms of discrimination based on our multiple identities. Gender discrimination intersects with discrimination on the basis of racial or ethnicity, sexual orientation, indigenous identity, and disability among others, to produce particular forms of violence and particular obstacles to obtaining justice, services, and opportunities to move out of the situation they are in.  A human rights framework can allow activists to identify these intersections and discover strategies to obtain justice and dignity that are appropriate to particular groups of women and girls. 

Let me talk about one case of domestic violence in the USA.  One third of women murdered in our country each year are killed by a current or former partner.  Here is one example:

In California, Maria Teresa Macias has appealed to the police more than 20 times for protection without success.  Her husband beat and sexually assaulted her and their three children.  After Ms Macias fled their home, her husband stalked her constantly.  On April 15, 1996, he short and killed her and then shot her mother twice before turning the gun on himself.  Her mother survived.  After 6 years of action and legal assistance, her family initiated a federal civil rights lawsuit contending that she had been denied her constitutional rights by being denied equal protection under the law because she was a woman, a victim of violence in the family and a member of an ethnic minority.  In July 2000, the US Court of Appeals found Ms Macias's right to police protection in a non-discriminatory manner had indeed been denied.  In June 2002, the sheriff's department paid her family one million dollars in compensation. This court ruling was the only one for many years to hold a branch of our government accountable in a domestic violence case.   The Sheriff's Department did not fulfill its obligation to protect her against violence.  This case not only illustrates egregious lack of due diligence and a failure to protect,  but also how the intersection of Ms Macias's identities as a woman, and a Latina came together to exacerbate discrimination and result in lack of protection that cost her life.

 Although human rights language was not used by the court, the decision set an important precedent and cases alleging failure to protect continue to be brought in the U.S using the human rights framework.

A second advantage of the human rights framework is the interdependence and indivisibility of rights.

The UDHR treats civil and political rights as equal to the rights to food, housing, education, and social security.   The US has argued that these latter rights should be aspirational and not the immediate obligations of states parties. This is no longer accepted internationally.    In the 21^st century, activists have begun to use the full range of rights covered in the UDHR as a result of realizing that many organizations have been working on inter-related issues but have worked in isolation.  As we see the indivisibility of these rights and the necessity of fulfilling them all in order to solve social injustices, we see that our ostensibly different rights issues are different facets of a larger struggle for social justice and human dignity.

For example, how can a woman leave an abusive relationship if she has no access to housing for herself and her children?   How can she leave if she is not economically independent?  How can she become economically less dependent on a partner without receiving training and jobs?  How can she accept training if there is no child care for her children while she is away from the home?  How can she become economically independent if she can't read or use computers or the myriad of skills one learns in school?    All these needs are covered by rights represented in the UDHR and other human rights agreements.  Human rights framework helps us to see the interdependencies and inter-connections among rights. 

Finally, I want to return to an absolutely fundamental advantage of human rights:  Global engagement.

 Human rights are international; this forces governments and people alike to think globally. So that for example,  women around the world can see similarities in their subordinate status, in the prevalence  of violence they face,  in their lack of equality before the law, in the rationales for violence embedded in beliefs systems in their society and they can share strategies.  Working globally, women can provide solidarity for struggles around the world that mirror their own and with global support, we can change local injustices.  We can also find global support for our own efforts here to make our government and our society respect the rights of women to live lives of dignity, free of violence, and full of promise.

At the time of this presentation Sheila Dauer was the Women’s Human Rights Specialist, Amnesty International USA