Cultural Violence in Traditions of Other Societes

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)

FGM refers to several types of traditional cutting operations performed on women and girls. Often part of fertility or coming-of-age rituals, FGM is sometimes justified as a way to ensure chastity and genital “purity.” FGM occurs primarily in over 25 African countries, among some minorities in Asia and immigrant communities in Europe, Australia, Canada and the US. An estimated 130 million women today have undergone FGM, and an additional 2 million girls and women are being subjected to it each year. Since the late 1980s, opposition to FGM and efforts to combat the practice has increased.

Some countries have passed legislation to regulate or ban FGM.— UNIFEM supported a project in Kenya, which involved local communities developing alternative coming-of-age rituals, such as “circumcision with words” — celebrating a young girl’s entry into womanhood with words instead of genital cutting. A joint initiative by UNICEF, WHO, and UNFPA seeks to drastically decrease the incidence of FGM, including assisting governments to develop and implement national polices to abolish the practice.

Dowry Murder

Dowry murder is a brutal practice involving a woman being killed by her husband or in-laws because her family is unable to meet their demands for her dowry — a payment made to a woman’s in-laws upon her engagement or marriage as a gift to her new family. It is not uncommon for dowries to exceed a family’s annual income.While cultures throughout the world have dowries or analogous payments, dowry murder occurs predominantly in South Asia. In India, for example, there are close to 15,000 dowry deaths estimated per year and mostly in kitchen fires designed to look like accidents. In Bangladesh, there have been many incidents of acid attacks due to dowry disputes, leading often to blindness, disfigurement, and death. In 2002, 315 women and girls in Bangladesh were victims of acid attacks.— In India, women’s organizations have successfully advocated for changes to the 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act, including amendments in the 1980s to hire community members as “dowry prohibition officers.” In addition, the country’s murder law has been revised to define and punish dowry death.

Honour Killings

In many societies, rape victims, women suspected of engaging in premarital sex, and women accused of adultery have been murdered by their male relatives because the violation of a woman’s chastity is viewed as an affront to the family’s honour.According to a 2002 UN human rights report, more than 1,000 women are killed in Pakistan in the name of honour every year. In a study of female deaths in Alexandria, Egypt, 47 per cent of the women were killed by a relative after the woman had been raped. In Jordan and Lebanon, 70 to 75 per cent of the perpetrators of these so-called honour killings are the women’s brothers.

It is not only in Islamic countries that this act of violence is prevalent. Brazil is cited as a case in point, where killing is justified to defend the honour of the husband in the case of a wife’s adultery.

Early Marriage

The practice of early marriage is prevalent throughout the world, especially in Africa and South Asia. This is a form of sexual violence, since young girls are often forced into the marriage and into sexual relations, which jeopardizes their health, raises their risk of exposure to HIV/AIDS and limits their chance of attending school.Parents and families often justify child marriages to ensure a better future for their daughters. Parents and families marry off their younger daughters as a means to gain economic security and status for them as well as for their daughters. Insecurity, conflict and societal crisis also support early marriage.

In many African countries experiencing conflict, where there is a high possibility of young girls being kidnapped, marrying them off at an early age is viewed as a means to securing their protection. In some countries, a rapist can be exempt from punishment if he is prepared to marry the victim, and the law can allow judges to lower the age of marriage in cases where the rape victim is a minor.In the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, for example, young girls are “sold” by their parents into marriage for money. This is done without the consent of daughters; and often the husbands are wealthy older men. This is no longer permitted by law, but still practiced. Girls fleeing such marriages can be put in jail and are shunned by society. If they are released, they are either killed by their own family or their in-laws, or sold again.

Trafficking in Women and Girls

Trafficking involves recruiting or transporting another person in order to place them in a situation of abuse or exploitation such as forced prostitution, slavery-like practices, battering and extreme cruelty, sweatshop labour, or exploitative domestic servitude.While exact data is hard to come by, estimates on the number of trafficked women and girls range from 700,000 to two million per year. More than 200,000 Bangladeshi women have been trafficked from 1990 to1997; and 5000 to 7000 Nepali women and girls illegally trafficked to India. In Europe for example, 10 to 15 per cent of foreign prostitutes in Belgium were trafficked from other countries and sold into prostitution rings. These women and girls were mainly from Central and Eastern Europe, Colombia, Nigeria and Peru.

Illegal trafficking in persons frequently involves organized crime, and efforts to combat it can involve serious risks.


Crimes against Women in War and Armed Conflict

The victims in today’s armed conflicts are far more likely to be civilians than soldiers. Some 70 per cent of the casualties in recent conflicts were non-combatants — most of them women and children. Women’s bodies have become part of the battleground for those who use terror as a tactic of war — they are raped, abducted, humiliated and made to undergo forced pregnancy, sexual abuse and slavery. In Rwanda, up to half a million women were raped during the 1994 genocide. The numbers are as high as 60,000 in the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Equally, in Sierra Leone, the number of incidents of war-related sexual violence among internally displaced women from 1991-2001 is as high as 64,000.Protection and support for women survivors of violence in conflict and post-conflict areas is woefully inadequate.