Violence in many forms

ONE OF the creepier stories in the TV news line-up filled with the bizarre and the weird (on the occasion of Halloween and All Saints Day) was the report about a seven-month pregnant woman found dead and naked in a provincial cemetery.

The primary suspect in the heinous crime was a neighbor of the woman’s, and police said the violence may have been the result of a spat over drug money. Still, one can imagine the real-life horror that greeted grieving relatives making their way to the graves of their loved ones and stumbling upon the corpse.

While grisly and disturbing, the woman’s death is really part of a rather “mundane” reality in the Philippines: the prevalence of crimes of violence against women.

It is a reality reflected in global statistics, where many women—in some countries as many as one in three—are beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in their lifetimes. Worldwide, one in five women will fall victim to rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. Global statistics also prove that half of the women who die from homicide (perhaps including the woman in the cemetery) are killed by their current or former husbands or partners.

Indeed, for women aged 15 to 44 years, violence is a major cause of death and disability.

In the view of Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, House minority floor leader and co-chair of the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD), one of the reasons for the increasing number of women victimized by violence in the streets and in their homes is the “stigma and shame” attached to being a battered woman or a victim of sexual abuse, rape, prostitution and trafficking.

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IN A speech he delivered during the Regional Ministers’ and Parliamentarians’ Conference on “Review of Parliamentarians’ Actions and Legislation on the Elimination of Violence against Women” in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Lagman cited the unbelievable results of a community-based survey conducted in Tabaco City, Albay, (his daughter Criselle is the mayor of Tabaco) in his district.

To make the service delivery as responsive as possible to the needs and problems of residents, said Lagman, a Community-based Monitoring System (CBMS) seeks the views of Tabaco citizens on such issues as a family’s source of clean drinking water, preferred method of family planning, and crime in their neighborhoods.

“It is very revealing to note that respondents readily give out information about suspected drug users and petty thieves within their communities but they are ominously silent when it comes to answering the very innocuously-phrased question: ‘Do you know of a woman who is being physically, verbally or emotionally abused?’” said Lagman in his speech.

“It is unbelievable that not a single woman is a victim of gender-based violence in the whole of Tabaco City which has a population of 125,000,” he said, concluding that “silence aggravates the commission of domestic violence against women and girls.”

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DESPITE the passage of laws to help combat gender-based violence, Lagman says that the Philippine Commission on Women reported last July that the number of VAW cases reported to the police rose by 37.4 percent in 2009 compared to 2008. This bit of news comes after a continuous downward trend in VAW cases from 2001 to 2006, with Lagman noting that “the sudden increase is a cause for concern.” Domestic violence or in legal parlance, “wife battering resulting in physical injuries,” remains the most prevalent form of VAW, accounting for 45.5 percent of all VAW cases throughout the Philippines.

In the face of this growing incidence of crimes of violence against women and girls, Lagman points out that after years and decades of battling the scourge of violence, one thing remains clear, and that is that “men and boys are indispensable in winning the war against VAW.”

“Men and boys are central to finding a permanent solution to this age-old problem because they play a key role in changing unequal power relations between the sexes,” he says.

This is so not only because the majority of perpetrators of violence are men, but also because their cooperation is necessary in addressing gender inequalities in both the domestic and public spheres, correcting the disadvantages that confront women in the spheres of education, livelihood opportunities, and public decision-making.

“We must draw attention to gender-based violence as a public issue and not a private matter to be resolved by husband and wife within the confines of their bedroom,” says the Albay representative. And because of the health costs of VAW, the problem must also be viewed as a “public health concern because violence crimes against women in all their subtle and menacing forms affect the physical, psychological and emotional health and well-being of women and in turn undercut their potential for valuable contributions to development and nation-building.”

Men and boys, says Lagman, “are crucial players not only because they wield great power and influence … (but also because) they are central to the very problem at hand as the main perpetrators of violence… Without a doubt, there is more than enough room for men in the movement to eradicate gender-based crimes.” –Rina Jimenez-David, Philippine Daily Inquirer