Globally, organisations and activists working to end violence against women and girls are increasingly exposed to hostility and extreme violence. Whether in Iran, Afghanistan, Poland, the USA, or Germany – people who publicly take a stand against gender-based violence are more and more frequently systematically insulted, threatened, persecuted, and attacked. As author Susanne Kaiser puts it, we are currently experiencing an international backlash against women’s rights.
Decades after the first day of action on 25th November, the resolute commitment to combating violence against women and girls is more important than ever! Women and girls in our society continue to be affected by gender-based violence to an extreme extent. It affects women in public and at home, in digital and analogue spaces, in private life and in professional contexts. The violence occurs at individual, structural, and institutional levels – violence against women is omnipresent and an elementary component of our society.
The situation is particularly dramatic for women and girls who belong to particularly vulnerable groups and experience intersectional discrimination. On the one hand, they are exposed to an increased risk of violence due to their origin, skin colour, sexual/gender identity, age, disability, or other characteristics. On the other hand, these women are mostly excluded from existing support and assistance services for victims of violence and are largely left unprotected from violence. For example, women and girls with disabilities are affected by violence two to three times more often than women in the general population. They experience a high degree of domestic and public violence, as well as discriminatory behaviour from authorities, offices, care services, and other institutions. Despite the extreme risk, there are hardly any counselling and assistance services for women with disabilities affected by violence. Counselling centres and women’s shelters often lack financial resources to offer accessible support. Only ten per cent of women’s shelters and one third of women’s counselling centres are at least partially accessible. In addition, there is a lack of measures and a national strategy to dismantle violence-promoting structures and to protect women and girls with disabilities preventatively from violence.
The protection of women and girls with disabilities is enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Istanbul Convention. On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we therefore call on the German government to implement the convention’s requirements. Counselling centres and women’s shelters must be provided with sufficient financial resources to ensure the widest possible accessible access. Comprehensive information on the topic of violence is needed; both for women with disabilities themselves and for the people living/working in their environment. The overall strategy to be developed for the implementation of the Istanbul Convention must take into account the particular vulnerability of women experiencing multiple discrimination and include effective measures to combat violence. To this end, we also call for stronger funding for perpetrator work, so that it can be offered nationwide and also barrier-free. Only in this way can perpetrators with disabilities or language barriers be reached, and victims better protected from (further) violence.
Violence against women is not an isolated phenomenon, but is structurally embedded in our society. Only together can we succeed in breaking down these structures. As a pro-feminist umbrella organisation, we stand in solidarity with all women affected by violence and demand the full implementation of the relevant conventions!
