"I don't believe that most governments actually think that violence against women is a priority," says Indian activist
By Maria Caspani
UNITED NATIONS, March 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Governments are not putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to efforts at ending gender-based violence, said a women's rights advocate speaking at the United Nations.
Anuradha Kapoor, head of Swayam, an organisation that works to end violence against women in India, said too often governments pass laws to protect and empower women but then fail to allocate budgets to implement them.
"Whether it is domestic violence or sexual violence...where are the services for women? There is no budget, there is no money... so where is the commitment?" Kapoor said at the 59th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York.
"I don't believe that most governments actually think that violence against women is a priority," she said.
In India, for example, a law that was passed to protect women from domestic violence has no budget, Kapoor said. What little money was allocated to the initiative at the beginning was barely enough to give any kind of support to women.
Violence against women around the world persists at "alarmingly high levels," with one in three women saying they had experienced violence in their lifetime, according to a report this week from the U.N. Secretary-General's office.
Changing cultural norms that relegate women to secondary, and often inferior, roles in society is key to ending gender-based violence, speakers said.
"Even though we have passed the laws, we have not been able to change the underlying norms that continue to erode the inches that we've been gaining," said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of U.N. Women, who chaired the event.
But some positive changes have occurred since a landmark declaration on women's rights was adopted in Beijing 20 years ago.
Women in India - a deeply patriarchal society with high levels of gender-based violence - are finally speaking out, said Kapoor.
"Twenty years down the line I can say that women who used to wait 10 or 15 years before actually coming out to speak, are now coming out to speak maybe a week, two weeks after (the violence happened)," she said.
While acknowledging the need to allocate more funds, Cambodia's minister of women's affairs, Ing Kantha Phavi, said governments had taken important steps in the right direction.
"You have this coordination which is not easy at all...and we got money to try to do it, we try to do our best," said Phavi.
Cambodia's government recently approved its second national action plan to tackle violence against women, drawing on expertise from across government, civil society and survivors of violence. (Reporting by Maria Caspani; Editing by Ros Russell)
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