Regional Commemoration for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
Date:
[As delivered]
Speech by Dr Miwa Kato, Regional Director, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, at United Nations Conference Centre, Bangkok, Thailand.
Good Morning, your excellencies, distinguished delegates, UN partners, ladies and gentlemen, we are here to commemorate the International Day to End Violence against Women, which also marks the commencement of the global 16 days campaign to mobilize to end violence against women.
On this important occasion, we come together to celebrate the significant gains that we have made together working on various fronts, but also to reflect on where increased efforts are still desperately needed in our region of Asia-Pacific.
For decades, activists around the world advocated tirelessly to bring the world’s attention to the critical issue of violence against women.
Violence against women is a human rights violation that permeates every corner of society, every country in the world and is widespread and very costly as well for those beyond the women who are experiencing it. It has staggering, long term consequences that can last for generations and also impacts on everybody in the society. It deserves our full attention, commitment and but also accountability to take action to change and address.
As UN Women’s Executive Director, Dr Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, noted on the occasion of the International Day to End Violence against Women, “The price of no change is simply unacceptable.”In our region of Asia-Pacific, as in the rest of the world, violence against women is widespread, systematic and culturally entrenched in many of the countries, and affects women and girls regardless of country and social contexts that they live in.
Despite significant achievements in the area of policy and legal reform as highlighted also by the Executive-Secretary, violence remains pervasive across the region: While the global average for women who have ever experienced violence in their lifetime is 1 in 3, in many of the countries in our region of Asia-Pacific, the figures could be as high as 1 in 2 or 2 in 3 women.
Every woman and girl who experience violence has the right to receive care and support, and to see justice served. Yet, in many countries, the laws are often lacking or inadequate, or not duly enforced where they exist. Too often, shelters, heath care and support services are either not available at all or of poor quality as they struggle to collect the necessary resources, while the criminal justice system is remote or struggling, being inaccessible to the victims and appears sometimes uninterested in meeting the needs of women.
Violence against women is a severe violation of women’s human rights, but it also represents a massive drain of human capital and economic potential which the region desperately needs. A recent study estimated that the cost of intimate partner violence could be as high as 5.2 per cent of the global economy.
We are here together today to recognize that addressing a complex and multi-faceted problem such as violence against women, we need to have multi-faceted solutions.At national policy level, UN Women partners with the governments of the region to enhance the effectiveness of justice and support system for women. In Indonesia, for instance, the government has developed and is implementing tools for monitoring and evaluating the Domestic Violence (DV) Law, in partnership with UN Women.
In Timor-Leste, the government undertook an evaluation of the National Action Plan (NAP) on Violence Against Women, which later informed its revision and resulted in increasing budget which is a very important component of the action that is required.
Also, at the school level, the Ministry of Education and Sports in Lao PDR, for instance, has piloted a school-based curriculum dialogue tool on Violence Against Women Group (VAWG) in partnership with UN Women. Through the Change-Makers programme designed for youth activism under the UNiTE campaign, youth used the peer education model to promote respectful relationships in China, Viet Nam and Cambodia.
At the regional level, we have worked closely with ASEAN Secretariat and the countries of ASEAN in the development and implementation of the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action (RPA) on the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Finally, governments in Indonesia, Lao PDR, and Timor-Leste, in cooperation with UN Women, have produced new evidences coming out this year on costs related to violence against women that we are presenting today.
You might see some of the data in the handouts that should be available to you, which shows the impact of violence beyond the individual who receives it, but also as a cost to public, cost to the governments, but also to society that requires much more intensive look in terms of how we reduce this cost, at the same time reduce the suffering of women and girls.
UN Women is very grateful to all the partners, many of you who are in this room, who allow us to support women and girls across the region in this very important area of ending violence against women. But in particular, we would like to express our appreciation to the Government of Australia who has been supporting us for this very important work especially those leading to this cost analysis. This also allows us to talk with policy-makers in the countries of Asia-Pacific and its partner countries in a way to look at it also as public cost, not just as a human right issue for women, but also as a social priority to address, and we are very grateful for having started this study of costing, which we hope to continue in collaboration with ESCAP, another partner present today. We are also grateful for the Government of Canada for supporting our work on the side of improving access to justice for women which is another indispensable element for effective response to end and reduce violence against women. So we do all we can, and we have a lot to be proud of, when we look back in the past years of various achievements. At the same time, we know that there are still women and girls, disproportionately high number, who still continue to suffer; and therefore, we must do much better than what we do today.
Experts are unanimous that the benefit of ending violence against women and girls would far outweigh the investment necessary. Evidence also illustrates how even relatively small-scale investments that are timely and well-targeted can bring enormous benefits to women and girls and their wider communities.
A recent multi-country study by UN Women, which I referred to earlier, that we conducted in selected Southeast Asia countries found that the cost of delivering a minimum package of essential services for women and girls who experience violence does not amount to a significant financial burden to governments, only representing 0.31 per cent of their GDP in selected countries, while the cost of leaving violence as it is are estimated to have 3 per cent to the countries’ GDP. Obviously, this is an initial work, based on couple of countries of our region, but it does give us an indication of the relatively smaller investment that is still lacking today to address the consequences, or to prevent violence against women, which then translates into a much higher share of burden on national economies and societies, and we hope, with your support, to have greater understanding of this throughout Asia-Pacific and to inform global discourse as well.
As the Executive Secretary of ESCAP has mentioned, we are very grateful to be having the 16 days campaign here against the backdrop of ESCAP’s SDG week.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDG adopted last year gives us new tools to drive change. Its ambitious targets demand innovative solutions and new partnerships to mobilize resources, including from national governments, international development assistance partners, private businesses, foundations and individuals, but above all, for us to unite in various interrelated challenges that face the world today.
We are very grateful as UN Women, of course, to note that for the first time in the history of the United Nations, we have a dedicated goal: SDG 5 on gender equality, but also many other goals, as the Executive-Secretary has addressed earlier, relates inseparably to the empowerment of women. There is no way to address poverty or lack of education, change in health infrastructure, or even to address governance and security issues without thinking of the role of women. Women, of course, to be supported as victims, but not only that. Women are so much the key to drive the changes that are necessary to turn each of the SDG goals to a reality. So we are very much welcome the linkages we are making here, right here from Bangkok between SDG and our cause to promote women’s empowerment and in particular to end all forms of violence against women and girls.
The time is now to leverage our networks of which we have many, our partnerships which we see a lot in this room today as well, and also our budgets to invest clearly and immediately to end violence against women and girls. Whether in the workplace, in schools, in public streets and parks, with communities of faith, through media, and with the arts community, and of course through various efforts done in the name of international development, taking action to end violence against women and girls has the potential to change the course of our shared social and economic trajectories.
I want to thank our UNiTE partners who came from youth activist networks, women’s rights groups, governments of the region, the diplomatic community, UN agencies, all represented either today or through our on-going discussions through the UN frameworks, sport associations, businesses, and many people who are gathered around the region to make the 16 days of activism something more than just a campaign. It is a moment for us to come together to think what we have done and what more we can do better going into the next years.
Together, we can scale up prevention and increase access to essential services for victims of violence.
Together we can end impunity and mobilize resources necessary, so that all women and girls can live freely without violence. But above all, as the Executive-Secretary has said earlier as well, we require a change in mindset, and that begins with each and every one of us here, who can translate this into our daily lives, daily work, and everything we do, so we are very grateful to have this opportunity to be together with you and to reaffirm our commitment to make that change and to be that change to end violence against women in our region and in the world.
Together, we can build a more sustainable, peaceful and resilient world - one where women and girls, and men and boys, are able to flourish as equal participants in their families, communities and societies.
Let us use today’s opportunity of getting together, also being able to listen to a very interesting panel to follow to think of concrete things we can do together and we look very much forward as UN Women to working with each of you to make this into reality throughout the 365 days of the year as well.
Thank you very very much.