Today, International Women’s Day, will see the Home Secretary, Theresa May, launch the government’s strategy on tackling violence against women.
Yet documents leaked to the Times (£) show that Britain is trying to water down an international agreement to protect women against domestic and sexual violence.
The Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence has been two years in the making and was ready to be signed off by the 47 member states.
But, in an unprecedented step, Britain has intervened to object to the wording “violence against women is understood as a violation of human rights”. Instead, it wants “violence against women constitutes a serious obstacle for women’s enjoyment of human rights”.
It also wants to alter the document so that it applies only in peacetime, and not during armed conflict – a surprising request, given the widespread international use of rape as a weapon of war.
José Mendes Bota, president of the Committee on Equal Opportunities at the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, said he was “very concerned about UK objections”. Reportedly only Russia supports the idea of reopening negotiations.
This intervention seems utterly inexplicable. As Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, points out:
Britain was part of establishing an international consensus in the 1990s that violence against women should be treated as a human rights abuse. So why on earth is the Tory-led government ripping up this now?
A spokesman for the Home Office told the Times only that a “detailed action plan” would be announced later today, including “the action we are taking worldwide” for the first time. It remains to be seen whether today’s revelation will be addressed.
Back in July, May said that her ambition was “nothing less than ending violence against women and girls”. The government’s claims to be strengthening women’s rights at home sound distinctly hollow if it is covertly seeking to weaken them internationally.
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