Confronting Violence Against Women in India

In retrospect, it wasn’t that unusual of an event but would be one that finally broke the silence surrounding violence against women in the world’s second largest country.

On December 16, a 23-year-old medical student travelling with a male companion on a bus in New Delhi was beaten and gang raped by a group of 6 men for over an hour as the bus traveled across the city. When they were done, they threw her from the bus onto the road leaving her in critical condition. On December 30, she died from her injuries in a Singapore hospital, leaving a country to grapple with an entrenched political and social culture that does little to prevent other women from suffering the same fate.

That is because this incident is increasingly common in India. Less than two weeks after this rape, a 17 year old girl committed suicide after receiving police pressure to marry one of her attackers after she was gang raped in November. In 2011, a 16 year old Dalit girl was gang raped by 8 men who then circulated pictures of the crime throughout her village. In that case, none of the men involved were arrested for their crime but the girl’s father eventually committed suicide out of shame. Just a few days ago, a 15 year old Dalit girl was “released” by 3 men that kidnapped and raped her while holding her hostage for 15 days. This is just a small offering of the thousands of cases that occur throughout the country. Far from media headlines, women suffer the consequences of violence and sexual harassment every day in India. According to government figures, 228,650 of the 256,329 violent crimes committed in India last year were committed against women, a rate of nearly 90%. And those are only the crimes that are officially reported and logged by police, meaning the total number is likely much higher.

The culture of violence against women is so prevalent that it begins even before birth. India has one of the worst imbalances of women to men, currently standing at 914 women to every 1000 men. The imbalance is the result of gender-selective abortions called femicides where parents determine the baby’s gender via ultrasound and then terminate the pregnancy if the baby is a girl. In a country where sons bring prestige and money while daughters are viewed as a burden with their dowries and low income prospects, rather than work to change the gender inequalities that fuel this system, expecting parents from the affluent neighborhoods of Mumbai and New Delhi to the poor rural communities in the countryside turn to femicide to ensure that only sons will be added to their family. The resulting imbalance encourages trafficking and abuse, making things even worse for those girls who are born. Looking at the daily struggles women face throughout the country, it is no wonder that earlier this year India was voted as the worst place for women among the G20 by gender specialists, even beating out Saudi Arabia for the top spot.

Against this backdrop, it would seem unlikely that another rape would change the general code of silence against violence against women. But the attack in New Delhi ignited protests throughout the country and calls for reform of police attitudes towards sexual crimes. The protests, ranging from candlelight vigils to violent confrontations with police, all share the same anger and frustration towards the nation’s politicians and security sector for their refusal to take the safety of women seriously, time and time again. Even after protests broke out, the government was slow in their response, appearing unsure of how to handle the protesters’ complaints or really understanding why they were protesting. The entrenchment of this paternalistic view was seen just says after the protests started when the Association for Democratic Reform, an Indian think tank, released a new report detailing hundreds of politicians standing for elections that have been accused of sexual violence, including formal charges of rape. As Raj M. Desai and Shareen Joshi of the Brookings Institute noted, the protests are just as much about bad governance and rising crime rates as they are about the persistent gender inequality that defines most aspects of life in India.

But the persistence of gender inequality is what makes real progress in this area so difficult. Several NGOs such as the Centre for Social Research and Smile Foundation work on empowering girls and women and addressing the key issues that affect them. Not surprisingly, personal security is a major concern of many Indian women but it is far from the only one. Human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriages and rampant discrimination are daily realities for millions of women across the country. There are many suggestions for why this is the case – economic inequality, conservative cultural constraints, envy, greed, or just plainly too many people with too little opportunity. Regardless, with such an entrenched culture of inequality in a country of more than a billion people, any action seems small in light of the daunting task of progressive change.

However, what the recent protests in India demonstrate though is that change is necessary. Violence against women is always a public health issue, but in India it is clear that the inequality that underlines such violence is also a drag on economic growth and development, two things India needs. In the wake of the New Delhi gang rape, the culture of silence around the issue of violence against women may have been broken, but whether this most recent tragedy will mark a true wake-up call for the Indian elite remains to be seen. One hopes that it will, not just so a woman’s brutal death can mean something but also because without real change the lives of millions of women will continue to be defined by suffering for their birth in the world’s largest democracy as the rest of Indian society will continue to suffer the social and economic consequences of inaction.

Originally published on December 31, 2012 at www.foreignpolicyblogs.com

The African Commission Takes on SADC

One of the classic debates within the development field is the interplay between rights and economic prosperity. On one side of the debate are those who argue that development should come first, even if it is at the cost of civil and political rights of the population. On the other side are those arguing that they must come hand in hand, as the suppression of rights often leads to political instability and conflict, which harms any possible gains made in economic development. To be sure, the importance of dependable property rights and accessible due process in legal disputes has been linked by several scholars as general requirements to sustained economic growth. Indeed, this was the thinking behind incorporating human rights into the regional economic communities that sprung up across Africa following the end of colonization.

But the part of the equation often left out is the reality that human rights are only worth as much as they can be enforced, and often that requires enforcing these rights against national governments committing the abuses. Consequently, it did not take long before the three major regional economic communities in Africa – The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community – established their own regional courts of justice that addressed the issue of human rights.

Unfortunately for SADC, that legacy may be approaching its end. In 2008 the SADC Human Rights Tribunal ruled against Zimbabwe on the infamous land seizure policy the government put into place in 2000. The ruling set up a showdown between the Tribunal and Robert Mugabe, who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the decision.  Rather than support the legal judgment of the tribunal and the importance of upholding human rights in the region, the 14 member governments suspended the tribunal in 2010 and recently rewrote the admissibility procedures to prohibit individuals from filing complaints with the tribunal, limiting it to state complaints only.

Several key figures in the region spoke out against these developments, to no avail. But it looks like the issue may be getting new life as the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights ruled a complaint by Luke Tembani and Ben Freeth against all 14 SADC member states admissible on the basis that the suspension of the tribunal violates the African Charter on Human Rights and the rule of law.

Tembani and Freeth are no strangers to the intricacies of human rights litigation. Tembani became one of the first black commercial farmers following the Zimbabwe civil war in 1980 while Freeth came to prominence as a farmer activist along with his father-in-law Mike Campbell. Both families were evicted from their commercial farms as part of Mugabe’s land reform program and both filed cases in the national Zimbabwean courts and finally the SADC tribunal where they won. In many ways, they have become the faces of the fight against the farm seizures and the political violence and corruption it has come to represent, especially following the death of Campbell who succumbed to health issues after being abducted and tortured by militias associated with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party in the 2008 post-election violence. By bringing a complaint against all SADC governments, the case makes the struggle of everyday Zimbabweans a regional issue and demands better action by SADC than capitulating to one leader’s demands.

If the African Commission rules in the favor of the complainants, it could be a landmark decision for the entire continent. But with new presidential elections expected in 2013, the decision to hear the issue could add fuel to what is already looking like a volatile political fire. The issue here in not just the controversial land reform process that Zimbabwe adopted, but ability of citizens to hold their governments accountable for violating their basic rights, even when the national courts fail to do so. Enshrining this ability enforces human rights and the rule of law, but is also critical for economic development. As Africa continues to come out from behind the economic shadows, it is cases like this that will define the path of the continent and help decide what kind of standards future governments will have.

Originally published on November 27, 2012 at www.foreignpolicyblogs.com

In Russia, a Return to Bad Habits →

There was a brief moment in time, back in the early 1990s, where the idea of Russia becoming a real democracy did not seem ridiculous. By now, that illusion has passed. Corruption passes for governance, civil society functions albeit under strict scrutiny, and elections are less than free and fair. Needless to say dissent is not looked highly upon, so much so that earlier this year Russian officials declared a “rally” of “protesting” toys an illegal “unsanctioned public event.” The absurdity is good for a quick laugh, but actually just highlights the reasons why Freedom House found Russia to beconsolidated authoritarian regime in its Nations in Transit 2012 report.

There have been those who have fought against this slide. Numerous journalists have attempted to unveil the reality of the Russian government, with Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova probably being the best known and who were murdered in 2006 and 2009 respectively. Major protests broke outin December 2011 against Putin’s consolidation of power and the elections that cemented in power. But nothing has quite captured the same level of attention as Pussy Riot, a little known Russian punk performance group, before the Russian establishment declared war or them.

The cardinal sin in the Pussy Riot saga is a “punk prayer” they put on at Moscow’s Church of the Christ Savior. While the prayer only lasted about 40 seconds before they were thrown out, the real problem laid in the purpose of the performance which wasn’t made fully clear until an edited version – with an actual soundtrack – was released on YouTube. There, in an attempt to highlight the close relationship between the church and the state, the group sang a song calling upon the Virgin Mary to cast Putin out of office. Such an act of rebellion, albeit short and not really worth noticing, could not be ignored by the government. So of course three of the women involved were charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.

In other words, their act of rebellion against the establishment constituted a hate crime in the eyes of the state.

To the outside world, the unfolding drama seemed a bit absurd. Inside Russia it is a little more complicated. Russia is a conservative country where feminism is not highly looked upon, and the Russian Orthodox Church currently enjoys a return to their close relationship with the government since the end of communism. The act itself was very offensive to many people who felt that it mocked the church, the faithful, as well as the government. But the question still remained what cost should be paid for merely being offensive.

This is where the Pussy Riot story actually took off. In most Western countries, a similar act may still constitute a crime (ie: trespassing, disturbing the peace, etc.), but a fine would be far more likely than jail time. But in Russia, the crime of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred carries a minimum prison sentence of two years and a maximum of seven. Is seven years an appropriate punishment for a 40 second stunt? Is two years? Does the act call for any punishment at all?

Answering these questions was the supposed purpose of the trial, but the trial itself was a charade. After being repeatedly denied bail and spending five months in prison, the trial of Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova opened and soon became a showcase of Orwellian justice. While the women were confined in a large glass prison cell, the defense was denied the right to present most of their evidence while the prosecution focused on the brightly colored dresses the women wore, their art from when they were in kindergarten, and the importance of Orthodox faith for the testifying witnesses. Even in Russia where politics routinely invade judicial proceedings, the Pussy Riot trial gave a new meaning to “show trial.”

The end result was Friday’s verdict: two years imprisonment. No one was surprised as it was clear from the beginning that the conviction was ensured. As international human rights groups, foreign governments and celebrities rushed to condemn the sentence, outside the courthouse pro-Pussy Riot protesters clashed with police and others who showed up to demonstrate solidarity with the Orthodox Church. While the womens’ legal team announced their intention to appeal the decision, no one harbors any illusions that the verdict or sentence will change.

This is big news this week but the group’s importance is larger than their own story. Without a doubt, the feminist punk angle and celebrity attention the women received created a good hook that Western media outlets happily exploited. Some observers have expressed discomfort with this exploitation, and more precisely the level of attention Pussy Riot has received over other victims of Putin’s Russia and the commercialization of the group’s image. That is a fair criticism, but ultimately misplaced. In the end the power of Pussy Riot isn’t in their punk art or their feminism, but rather in who and what they represent in Russian society. They are not alone in suffering the consequences of Russia’s slide back to authoritarianism. Journalists, artists, activists, civil society groups and many others brave enough to publically stand up for their rights and speak out against the government have suffered accordingly with financial ruin, imprisonment, torture, and even death. The sentiment behind the street protests of last December was a pushback against this growing siege mentality. But movements need faces and empathetic stories in order to get widespread recognition. I don’t know if it was Pussy Riot’s intention to give the world just that when they walked into the Church of the Christ Savior in February, but it was clear in the moving closing statements of Samutsevich and Alyokhina that they recognized this new role and spoke for more than just their own situation. For the first time in a long while, the world is paying attention to the state of human rights in Russia. And for Russia, like Pussy Riot, the verdict is not good.

Originally published on August 20, 2012 at www.foreignpolicyblogs.com