Generational: Children in violent households more prone to perpetrate, experience violence as adults

FRANCE 24 English

Visit our website: http://www.france24.com  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/France24_en

Transcript

00:00And joining me now from New York is Kalliopi Mingeori-Ru from UN Women,

00:04who is a specialist on violence against women. Thank you so much for your time.

00:08Let's start by talking about this UN report and its findings, such as the fact that for

00:13many female victims, home is still the most dangerous place to be by contrast with male

00:19homicides, which occur mainly outside of the home. That itself speaks so much about this

00:24global epidemic, that the perpetrator is more often than not a partner, ex-partner or a family

00:30member. Thank you for having UN Women in your show. Indeed, our femicide report together with

00:39UNODC reveals that 85,000 women and girls were killed in 2023. Think about it. These rates are

00:48alarming. And they exceed often the fatalities that people experience during a war, for example.

00:56As you said, 60% of these women, they have been killed at home, or by their intimate partner,

01:05or by a family member in a place where they're supposed to find safety. And they were killed

01:11by someone that they really trusted and loved. I think this is really alarming.

01:17It also says so much about internalised biases in the way men still view women, that their lives

01:26are at the mercy of men, with violence against women being rooted in control, dominance and

01:32structural inequality. It's true. Indeed, the root causes of such violence against women is much

01:42rooted into gender bias, the beliefs, the attitudes that both men and women hold about

01:50the gender roles of women and men at home, at society more broadly, and also the very strong

01:59gender-based discrimination in laws and policies around the world. We know, for example, that men

02:07who have been holding gender-inequitable beliefs around what the gender roles and

02:13gender stereotypes should be about, they are the ones who tend to be perpetrating violence against

02:20women and girls. So how do you flip the script and place the onus on men

02:28accepting responsibility and what is clearly a massive problem for society in general?

02:33First of all, we really have to address impunity. Violence against women and girls,

02:38including happening in their homes, has been normalised because impunity is so pervasive.

02:46It's very, very important that perpetrators are held to account. Just to give you another

02:52alarming rate, most of the women that have been abused, 40% of these women,

03:00they do not have access, they do not report to any social services, and less than 10% of these

03:08women report to the police. So impunity is really, really alarming, pervasive, that makes violence

03:16really be considered as a normalised part of our lives, but it is not.

03:21Education, however, is key in all of this. What needs to be put into place to educate men and boys?

03:30First of all, I have to say that not all men are violent. The majority of men are not violent,

03:37and they have a very important role to play as well as bystanders. Just checking the behaviour

03:44and the attitudes of their peers when they are in a group and they hear about sexist jokes, for example,

03:51or comments about women, I think we all need to address this kind of gender stereotypes and how

03:58women and girls are portrayed. Indeed, education needs to start early, especially when we know

04:06Indeed, education needs to start early, especially when we know that one in four girls,

04:14before they reach the age of 19 years old, they have experienced some kind of intimate partner

04:20violence. And we know also that men and boys, they start this kind of violence towards their partners

04:28quite early. So you can imagine addressing this kind of violence early, it's very important to

04:36have educational programmes where we discuss about respectful relationships between boys and girls,

04:44men and boys, and just teaching everyone how important it is to live a life free from

04:51discrimination and violence. Also, I have to say that we have evidence that very often

04:58women and men who have witnessed violence and intimate partner violence at home

05:07when they were children, they are more prone to perpetrate violence or to experience violence,

05:14especially intimate partner violence, when they are adults. And that gives us a lot of information

05:21on how can we really stop this kind of violence already happening in the household, because it

05:27becomes a generational issue. Finally, this report and its very grim statistics is being

05:36issued at a time where we're seeing a rise in authoritarian governments, a swing to the far

05:43right, who certainly are not placing an emphasis on women's rights, and if anything, are rolling back

05:50women's rights. So how do we keep the focus on addressing this issue with governments who are

05:58clearly not interested in doing anything on the issue in the first place?

06:04The gender backlash and the broader backlash against gender equality, women's rights,

06:11is really serious right now. And we have to say that the use of technology platforms,

06:17the monosphere, really reinforces the social norms that really tolerate violence against women

06:24and girls. What we have seen the last few decades, that the role that women's movements can play

06:32in order to advocate for laws, policies, to put pressure on governments and on international

06:38voices, has been very important. And we have seen, indeed, changing laws and policies and also

06:46making the private issues, such as domestic violence, becoming a public issue. So we have

06:53hope that women's rights movements, being at the heart of the problem and just raising awareness

07:01and advocacy, they can really turn the tide. Kalliopi Mingheri-Ru from UN Women,

07:07thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

Category

Transcript

Recommended