Extrait de la couverture : "Violence against women is a manifest and incontrovertible fact in South Asia. Deeprooted biases against women, derived from patriarchal and stereotypical attitudes, continue to have a very negatine impact on women's lives. The problems that women face range from domestic violence, sexual violence and dowry related violence to violence and harassment in the workplace, and violnce connected with discriminatory inheritance rights, low social status and economic deprivation. In the context, the law and State policy can both become important tools to ensure justice and protect women's rights. This very insightful volume critically analyses the law and law enforccement in three South Asian countries ... in order to assess the response of criminal justice system to violence against women."

This book, a collection of three essays, looks at the legal system's response to violence against women in South Asia. It is an overview of law and legal control in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The studies show the commonalities and the differences in the three legal systems. All three countries have experienced British colonial rule and their criminal laws are derived from the British legal tradition. All three countries grappled with similar issues and problems in using law as a strategy to combat violence against women. All three faced the problem of reconciling ethnic and religious or customary legal values with international and constitutionally guaranteed rights to equality and protection from violence. In Pakistan, the official Islamisation process added new and complex dimensions to the issues of administration of criminal justice and enforcement of family law. Each study adopts a different approach in its analysis of legal control--focussed on what is considered relevant for their country. Thus, the study on Sri Lanka is a critical review of a range of legal norms and procedures, the one on India is a critique of the implementation of the justice system and the one on Pakistan focuses on the failure to protect women from violence and uses non-legal materials too in discussing legal controls. The studies in this volume clearly demonstrate that the legal system has failed to protect women against violence. There is, nevertheless, recognition of the fact that the law and effective law enforcement machineries can serve as serious deterrents to violence. The studies explore the possibility of reforming the legal systems and suggest that multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies of South Asia must accept the concept of drafting general codes that conform with international human rights norms and recognize the people's right to opt for them in the governance of family relations.

This report documents the dynamics of violence against women in South Asia across the life cycle, from early childhood to old age. It explores the different types of violence that women may face throughout their lives, as well as the associated perpetrators (male and female), risk and protective factors for both victims and perpetrators, and interventions to address violence across all life cycle stages. The report also analyzes the societal factors that drive the primarily male — but also female — perpetrators to commit violence against women in the region. For each stage and type of violence, the report critically reviews existing research from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, supplemented by original analysis and select literature from outside the region. Policies and programs that address violence against women and girls are analyzed in order to highlight key actors and promising interventions. Finally, the report identifies critical gaps in research, program evaluations, and interventions in order to provide strategic recommendations for policy makers, civil society, and other stakeholders working to mitigate violence against women in South Asia.

This book presents new research on gender-based violence in Southeast Asia, bringing together varied scholarly work in law, policy, and practice. It enables a greater understanding of violence against women as an international concern, highlighting particular issues that arise in the region. Against a background of international obligations to ensure women's rights through laws and policies that are geared at ending violence against women and girls, this research documents the state failures, individual shame and fear, and societal culture that collectively affects the reporting, investigation, prosecution of perpetrators, and protection of victims. The research explores differing legal mechanisms both internationally, and within nation states, relating to cases of physical and sexual violence. It recognizes the need for functioning mechanisms to ensure women can report their cases safely and be provided with protective and therapeutic services in a way that is systematic, effective, and measurable. Laws and court decisions are analyzed, crisis and safety centers are examined, and in-depth interviews are conducted with actors and NGOs with relevant roles and functions in the mechanism of cases of violence against women. The result is a comprehensive assessment of the incalculable harm it does within Southeast Asian society, and the obstacles it presents for law enforcement. The chapters uncover mechanisms with unique characteristics across Southeast Asia, providing a nuanced understanding of the cultural and social backgrounds, as well as the religious structures, that can both help and hinder suitable frameworks. It is relevant to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in law, criminology, and gender sociology. “This is a valuable contribution towards empowering the women of South East Asia out of victimhood to valued equality, involvement in governance and leadership through the elimination of violence and discrimination and an excellent resource not just for those working in this field but for those involved in law making, the media and the people of South East Asia.” - Professor Felicity Gerry QC, Barrister at Crockett Chambers Melbourne and Libertas Chambers, London, and Professor of Legal Practice at Deakin University and Honorary Professor at Salford University.

This book is powerful, challenging and inspirational, and is an important contribution to debates on the complex intersections between ethnicity, gender and inequality, as well as on human rights and violence against women.

In the last couple of decades, violence as an analytic category has loomed large in the historical, literary, and anthropological scholarship of South Asia. The challenge of thinking violence in its gendered incarnations fully and in all its complexity is not only theoretical or critical but also irreducibly ethical and political, given the proliferation of civil wars, pogroms and riots, fundamentalist movements, insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, and new technologies of violence and injury. All of these simultaneously feature and help constitute gendered actors and gendered scripts of violence. States of Trauma seeks to examine this terrain by staging a set of questions. How are we to think about the moral charge that accrues to violence? What is the relationship between violence and non-violence? In considering the moral and affective economy of violence, how may we speak of the seductions of the idioms and practices of militarism and sexualized violence for women? How are these seductions/pleasures distinct from those proffered to men, if indeed they are distinct?

The incidence of domestic violence in South Asia is among the highest in the world and gender-based violence is seen as a major public health problem as well as a development and human rights issue. The experiences, views and recommendations of South Asian activists form the core of this book along with related findings and international concerns. The first part of the book starts with some basic definitions, looks at key international treaties and declarations and goes on to examine the problems that women and girls face due to gender violence. The second part of the book looks at why gender violence occurs, where change is needed and how to achieve change.