Opening Remarks by Roberta Clarke at the Regional Consultation on the Role of Key Stakeholders in Ending Impunity for Violence Against Women and Girls in Asia

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Mr. Philip Calvert, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Canada to the Kingdom of Thailand
Hon. Begum Meher Afroze, State Minister for Women and Children Affairs, People’s Republic of Bangladesh
Ms. ‘Kemi Ogunsanya, Interim Head, Gender Section, Commonwealth Secretariat, Honourable Members of Judiciaries,
National Human Rights Institutes, Ombudsman, Prosecutors and Police.
Distinguished Participants, UN Women and UN Colleagues

It is my pleasure to bring you greetings on behalf of UN Women and to welcome you all to this regional consultation on ending impunity for women and girls in Asia which UN Women is co-hosting with the Commonwealth Secretariat.

I also wish to acknowledge with gratitude the support the government of Canada to UN women generally and more specifically for its contribution to our work to advance the development and implementation of CEDAW compliant laws and policies in East South East Asia.

We start this meeting at the commencement of the annual 16 days of activism to end violence against women. This 16 days period asks of us that we speak out and act in solidarity in our spaces of influence to bring attention to this persisting epidemic of violation. This 16 days campaign demands resolve in transforming cultures of tolerance and impunity that still characterise the response to such violence.

Just last week, in the Asia Pacific region, we concluded the inter-governmental review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. Through this review, member states spoke to their achievements in improving services and responses to violence. Twenty-six or two-thirds of all countries in the Asia Pacific region have enacted specific legislation extending protection options and strengthening criminal justice systems. Some countries, though not many, have VAW NAPs (including for Asia, Republic of Korea, Cambodia, Timor-Leste) with VAW NAPs in draft form in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam.

Within SAARC and ASEAN, regional normative standards are evident in SAARC Convention on Trafficking in Women and Children and the ASEAN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and Children in ASEAN.

Yet the member states in their review expressed deep concern at the nonenforcement of laws, discriminatory legal provisions, delays and gender insensitivity in law enforcement; at the impunity experienced by some perpetrators of violence against women and girls.

We now have better knowledge and evidence about the scope of that impunity. According to a UN study that interviewed men across 9 sites in 6 countries across the Asia-Pacific region, the majority of men who perpetrate rape face no legal consequences. Further, the fact that in many sites, only a small proportion of men reported feeling guilty for perpetrating rape, especially men who perpetrated partner rape, suggest that such violence remains normalized.

And another multi-country study recently undertaken by UN Women in collaboration with UNDP and UNODC of the response of the administration of justice to reports of sexual violence speaks to the ‘vanishing’ or disappeared complainant as with the steady attrition of cases throughout the justice cycle from reporting to investigation and prosecution. In Thailand for example, over 30,000 cases of violence against women are reported to the Ministry of Public Health’s One Stop Crisis center. Yet only around 5,000 cases (4,920) are recorded by the police, and only around 1,500 cases result in an arrest. Too many women fearing stigmatization, with a misplaced sense of shame, give up on a system which appears uninterested, even hostile, and unresponsive to the abuse suffered and yes even corrupt as where there may be state actor involvement in trafficking cases.

Cultures of reconciliation pressure victims to settle cases out of court. In this ineffective justice response, gender based violence becomes delegalized and privatized. Some harms are entirely invisible as with rape within marriage. Only 10 countries in the region specifically criminalize marital rape.

All of this leads to silence and invisibility.

It is therefore beyond dispute that the justice system is not working for women and girls. There is a big gap between laws and their effective implementation. Exemption from the legal process is normal, not exceptional. It is for these reasons that we say that women and girls and indeed boys and men who experience gender based violence must not merely get law, they must get the rule of law.

That means all persons and authorities within the state must be bound by, accountable to the law. The rules we have and have fought for should be transparently and consistently applied. And plural legal systems must be consistent with international human rights norms. Culture should not be involved to perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes or to justify discriminatory laws, policies and practices.

Taking into account the persistence of gender inequality which violence is but one manifestation, member states at the Asia Pacific Conference resolved to meet the implementation deficit with recommendations which addressed political will: the determination and capacity to achieve equality, development and peace for all women.

Just last week, through this productive partnership with the government of Canada, we launched a publication written by Shanti Dairam in which she reminds us all that substantive equality cannot be experienced without implementation of laws and policies and without access to redress and effective remedies.

It is with substantive equality, with outcomes that the member states were concerned to address in their recommendations for strengthened institutions, increased financing, stronger partnerships and accountability, all of which are relevant to addressing impunity for violence against women.

While there was much focus on the role of national women’s machineries, very specifically, the member states stressed the need to strengthen other accountability mechanisms beyond the national women’s machinery, such as human rights commissions and ombudsmen, which can enhance the effectiveness of the national women’s machinery through coordination with other monitoring institutions.

Gathered in this meeting today are representatives from the police, prosecutors, judiciary, Ombudsmen, National Human Rights Institutions. All of you represent institutions integral to securing state accountability and guaranteeing women’s access to effective justice.

UN Women has been working with the judiciary including in the ASEAN region to strengthen capacity for CEDAW-informed jurisprudence, including through identifying gender stereotypes and sharing practices in training and codes of conduct.

This meeting however for this Regional Office marks what we hope to be the beginning of a strong partnership with Ombudsmen and NHRIs. Given its role in addressing public sector maladministration, the Ombudsman serves as a mechanism for accountability which allows both the redressing of individual experiences of injustice as well as addressing systemic systems and structures to ensure a more effective and equitable access to state actions and resources.Similarly, NHRIs through your education, monitoring, advocacy and advisory rolescan contribute substantially to ensuring that state institutions meet the due diligence standards in responding to violence against women.,

And we expect to use the results of our attrition study to work closely with police and prosecutors to advance access to justice through vigorous and fair policing and prosecution of sexual offences, unimpeded by gender stereotypes.

In this partnership with the Commonwealth Secretariat, the first for this Regional office, we hope to facilitate your sharing of good practices for ending impunity for VAWG in the region.

We also wish to explore the development of a regional network for multistakeholder cooperation to improve access to justice, which builds on the comparative strengths of the institutions present at the meeting. And in this I wish to thank UNODC and UNDP for its ongoing collaboration.

I wish to thank the Commonwealth Secretariat for this collaboration which we expect will take us into further partnership which on implementation which transforms culture, meeting women’s entitlements for lives free of violence.

Let us use the next 16 days as a reminder of our need for constant vigilance, for sustained action and in the words of the launch of the TIJ campaign yesterday, to Speak Up to protect women’s human rights. I wish us all a productive and engaging dialogue that leads to effective multisectoral partnerships at national and regional levels.

Thank you.