Editorial vol. 8 number 2

The right to freedom from 'torture or ... cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment' is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UHDR), whose fiftieth anniversary is celebrated this year. Human rights organisations, notably Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch group, have been tireless in documenting and challenging any government which either practises such acts of terror, or condones the so-called security forces who indulge in them. In particular, Amnesty calls on medical practitioners to desist from performing the physical mutilations that are used to punish criminals in some Southern countries. Today, its attention has also turned to the willingness of certain doctors in the North to be involved in administering lethal drugs to convicts, in what proponents of the death penalty seek to present as a 'civilised' form of execution.

However, most physical and mental torture worldwide is of a far more ordinary kind. Its dimensions are obscured by the pernicious public-private divide that feminism has exposed: if marital abuse were out in the open, it would surely be seen as 'cruel, inhuman [and] degrading'; something not to be tolerated by a civilised society. Instead, hidden from public view, the artificial cosiness of the term 'domestic violence' disguises as much as it reveals. Domestic violence actually means male violence against women and children; and is a fact of life in every echelon of society, North and South, rich and poor, university educated and non-literate, irrespective of religious faith or political creed. There is of course no evidence that violence is something that naturally inheres in the condition of having a wife or being a father, any more than in being the mother, partner, or child on whom it is inflicted. But that it is both a criminal assault and a profound violation of trust, appears not to be assumed.

Statistics are inaccurate, given the high levels of under-reporting by the victim-survivors. Even so, they are chilling. For instance, UNDP reports that two-thirds of married women in countries as distant as Chile, Papua New Guinea, and the Republic of Korea have been physically assaulted by their husbands. Studies in Bangladesh, Brazil, Kenya, and Thailand show that more than half of all murders of women are committed by their present or former partners. Cross-cultural evidence shows that marital violence is a leading cause of female suicide.(1) Behind such figures lie oceans of suffering and pain that do not necessarily result in major injury or death, and so remain secret. For example, the tribunals on domestic violence now being organised by the Centre for Women's Rights in Warsaw are bringing to light generations of abuse concealed by religious and political ideologies that extolled 'female martyrdom'.(2)

The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights achieved international recognition (and condemnation) of 'crimes of gender'. The crimes in question were the mass rapes that were used by fighters to further ethnic purges in the former Yugoslavia. However, while positive, this step also perpetuates the myth that male violence is essentially a deviation from the norm, rather than being the norm that many women and children suffer every day of their lives. Similarly, it is often implied that men are not really to be held fully responsible for their violence since it rises with unemployment and poverty, and happens when cannot handle the feelings of impotence that accompany their low social and economic status. This correlation may have some truth in it: if so, it is yet another reason to eradicate poverty! But it still does not explain why men should resort to violence in their relationships with their loved-ones (far more women than men live in poverty and social exclusion, but they seldom beat up their children or partners to vent their frustration). Nor does it explain why societies are so indifferent to the pain inflicted by men on women and children, much less offering anything in the way of solace or escape.(3) What it does suggest, however, is that violence is one way that men (re-)assert control in the face of changes that are perceived as in some way threatening to them.

Given that 'domestic violence' is a universal phenomenon, and one that shackles the lives of millions worldwide, it is remarkable how reluctant the major development actors (civil society organisations, NGOs, aid agencies, donors, governments) are to see it as an issue to be confronted. Instead, most dodge the subject, implicitly accepting that what goes on within the home is a private matter. It is a variation on the argument that it is fine for development policies and agencies to intervene in every aspect of social, economic, and political life - but that the cultural domain is somehow sacrosanct. Several contributors to this issue of Development in Practice challenge this worldview. In an horrific account of socially-sanctioned violence against women accused of witchcraft, Puja Roy suggests that unless development agencies find appropriate ways to address such aberrations, their efforts may simply serve to prop up the underlying systems of injustice. Sidney Ruth Schuler, Syed M Hashemi and Shamsul Huda Badal describe the connections between women's efforts to achieve greater economic independence, and the greater violence to which they are subjected by their male partners. This phenomenon is regrettable, if not entirely surprising. Just as worrying, however, is the way in which development workers and analysts either do not to see what is going on as a result of their own interventions, or simply opt to close their eyes to it.(4) Aruna Rao and David Kelleher share insights into the difficulties that both women and men, along with their organisations, experience in coping with change; but also suggest some constructive ways of articulating these.

Tina Wallace examines the rather disappointing record of UK NGOs on gender analysis; most of them either denying its validity or relevance, or doing little more than to pay lip-service. An ethos that is obsessed with getting quick 'results' and proving 'impact' has little time for the painstaking approach that a commitment to gender equity requires, exemplified in the method of data collection and analysis put forward by Paule Simard. Institutional policies can be invented relatively simply, however much negotiation is entailed. Attitudes take far longer to change, as Ranjani K Murthy shows in her own experience of gender training for men and women in development NGOs.

Poverty undoubtedly provides a fertile seedbed for many of the grosser forms of violence and conflict. But the seeds themselves are to be found in the very social institutions, cultural values, and attitudes that tolerate the everyday expressions of violence.

1 UNDP (1995), Human Development Report 1995, Oxford and New York: OUP, p. 45.

2 Neil Bowdler, 'Women in Poland lose habit of submission', Guardian Weekly, 22 February 1998.

3 By blaming poverty, this argument also conceals the fact that rich and powerful men also beat their partners and abuse their children - while many poor men do not. If male violence were consistently and exclusively associated with poverty (rather than just with men) the way to eradicate it would be far more obvious!

4 This is not to minimise the dilemmas involved in deciding how best, as an outsider, to express solidarity with the victims of marital abuse. For instance, it was not until I had worked in Honduras for almost a decade that I learned that three respected and inspiring women whose activities Oxfam supported (a university professor, an international human rights activist, and the leader of a peasant farmer association) had routinely been beaten up by their partners, even to the point of needing hospital treatment. One husband and father was himself a technical adviser to a popular education centre that preached a creed of non-violent social change. While for many years these women had 'covered up' for their partners' behaviour, they came to realise that they were being 'punished' for their public success. Ironically, they had survived the abiding threat of political violence during the years of military rule, only to experience daily torture in their private lives.

Abstracts