Every year an average of 66,000 women are violently killed globally, accounting for approximately 17% of all victims of intentional homicides. In Britain, Justice Secretary Dominic Raab aims to put the "fear of God" into those who threaten women and that restoring women's faith in the legal system was his "top priority" following a string of high-profile murders in London. He intends to introduce closer monitoring of how well the police and prosecutors are tackling rape and sexual violence. Over the past two decades, in Malta, there have been no less than 36 cases of femicides. A report on femicide in Malta, compiled by the University of Malta and the Women's Rights Foundation, had long been arguing for femicide to be made an aggravating offence to homicide and proposed electronic tagging of predators out on bail.
Grevio, too, had been calling for a stronger gender perspective where it concerns violence against women and domestic violence in Malta. While emphasising a number of positive legal and policy measures that have been taken by the Maltese authorities, which demonstrate a firm resolve to stem violence against women, it observed several issues where urgent improvement is warranted to reach higher levels of compliance with the requirements of the Istanbul Convention. The problem remains that while, in principle, Malta had broadened its policies to address other forms of violence against women beyond domestic violence, on the side of implementation, the Society’s Concern, Gender-Based Violence and Domestic Violence Strategy and Action Plan failed to provide for specific integrated measures to tackle harmful forms of violence against women other than domestic violence. Moreover, Malta had only adopted a gender-neutral approach to violence against women. Throughout the strategy and in legislation, the authorities have opted to employ the term gender-based violence instead of violence against women.
It is, thus, of paramount importance that the different forms of violence against women are addressed as a gendered phenomenon because they affect women disproportionately. These forms of violence are directed against a woman because she is a woman and therefore needs to be understood as a social mechanism to keep women in a subordinate position to men. The only related legislation we have so far in Malta is Chapter 581 that tackles gender-based violence and domestic violence. Fortunately, now, a draft law will be tabled in Parliament which introduces the concept of femicide to Malta’s criminal code. Our government, like many other governments around the globe, has a responsibility to protect women’s rights to life and liberty. By creating and enforcing laws that protect women from violence and discrimination, a precedent can be set and the complacency shown to the oppression of women can cease. Eventually, investigators and prosecutors should also be trained to take cases to trial.
Two of the largest risk factors for femicide and sexual violence are a lack of education and poverty which, in many cases, are intertwined afflictions. Education is a two-way street when seeking to end violence against women. Conceptually, there can be various forms of femicide, ranging from intimate partner violence, HIV-related femicide, honour killings, misogynist slayings, the death of a woman undergoing an unsafe abortion, to human trafficking. It would be no exaggeration to state that any of these forms have somehow taken place in our country and that the probability of an increasing incidence is a reality. This is why, indeed, our legislators must address this latest social phenomenon, or, rather, scourge, in the shortest time possible before the situation runs out of control.
Evidence has shown and continues to show that women’s leadership and inclusion in political decision-making processes improve governments. Female empowerment in government creates room for a discussion of many issues connected to gender equality and puts people with deep personal connections to these issues in positions with the power to fight the global prevalence of femicide. Hopefully, female leadership and inclusion in all societal strata in our country will continue to increase in a manner that gender-based violence will be confined to the annals of a dark history.
Educating men on the human rights of women can stunt the normalisation of violence against women in the minds of young men and boys. A perfect example of such an education can be seen in Nairobi, Kenya, where the non-profit organisation, No Means No Worldwide, implemented a programme to prevent sexual assault on girls and women. The curriculum for males aimed to shift attitudes that lead to the acceptance of assault and rape of their female peers. Those male students in the experimental group who received the aforementioned curriculum were twice as likely as those in the control group to successfully halt instances of verbal harassment and physical or sexual violence against women.
Every woman, from the prostitute to the nun, possesses equal right to safety, protection and freedom in a manner unrelated to the consent or standards drawn out by men. Our authorities must never choose which woman for whom to provide more protection and more safety based upon what she is doing with her own body, how she clothes herself or the style by which she chooses to live. The amount of shelter a woman receives in life is not indicative of the justice she is owed in death. I refuse to lean to the notion that any woman's untimely death may be put on trial in accordance to her living. Of course, if we are to fight discrimination and injustice against women we must start from the home for if a woman cannot be safe in her own house then she cannot be expected to feel safe anywhere.
Along with more refined laws and data collection practices on femicide and the usefulness of statistics and their importance in supporting the planning and monitoring of policies, female empowerment and the re-education of both men and women to the equal rights of women and in culture and society are the keys to ending the abhorrent levels of violence against women and the threatened prevalence of femicide in Malta.
Dr Mark Said is an advocate