UN human rights chief calls for end to ‘economic violence’ against women and girls

GENEVA, July 1, 2024 (UN News Centre) – It is time to dismantle laws and practices that lead to “economic violence” against women and girls, UN human rights chief Volker Türk told a Human Rights Council panel on Friday during the first annual full-day discussion on women’s rights at the UN Human Rights Council (OHCHR).

In her opening remarks at a full-day symposium on women and human rights, Turk said the global women’s movement had made “extraordinary progress.”

But he added that the fact that a separate panel needed to be convened to discuss gender-based violence showed that progress was “hard-won and fragile”.

The conference focused on so-called economic violence, a form of gender-based violence in which women or girls are deprived of access to economic resources because of abuse or control.

Turk noted that one in three women experiences some form of violence at least once in their lifetime, including physical, sexual, psychological or economic violence.

“If one in three men worldwide suffers from harm so devastating and pervasive, an urgent summit should be called,” he said.

Invisible and unregulated

The High Commissioner said economic violence is often unknown or unregulated, but can be as harmful as physical violence as it often takes forms of control, exploitation and destruction.

“While economic violence most often occurs in the home, the state can also facilitate and perpetrate it through discriminatory legal frameworks that restrict women’s access to credit, employment, social protection or property and land rights,” he said.

Turk said global efforts to achieve gender equality have not been successful so far, noting that 3.9 billion women worldwide face legal barriers that affect their economic participation, women earn only 77% of what men earn, and so on.

Time to start over

Turk said discriminatory laws and practices needed to be overhauled to stop economic violence.

“Gender equality needs to be actively promoted through laws governing all spheres of life, and policy measures are needed to ensure the implementation of these laws,” he said.

In addition, he said greater efforts are needed to ensure survivors of economic violence can seek justice and assistance.

“There needs to be better complaints mechanisms, economic and social support systems, more extensive psychological assistance and that perpetrators are brought to justice,” the High Commissioner said.

He stressed that violence against women and girls was “abhorrent and inexcusable”.

Civil

During the forum, members of civil society also expressed their views on the harm caused by economic violence.

Esther Waweru, senior legal adviser at Equality, said family inequality was one of the main causes of economic violence, along with “regressive patriarchal gender norms”.

She said 1.4 billion women worldwide live in countries that do not acknowledge economic violence and have no protections in place; an approach she said could leave more women and girls vulnerable to exploitation.

Waweru recommended that Member States enact comprehensive laws criminalizing sexual and gender-based violence, intimate partner violence and economic violence.

She called for laws to “repeal and revoke marital power clauses that designate the husband as head of the household” to “ensure a fair share of common property arising from marriage” and equal labor rights… PACNEWS

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