Violence and Freedom

On October 10, 2006, in a report to the General Assembly of the United Nations, Secretary- General Kofi Annan presented an in-depth study on all forms of violence against women. According to the report, “at least one out of three women experienced violence at some stage in their lives”; violence against women is thus not a characteristic of some countries. It is a global problem and “a serious public policy problem in all stable democracies,” according to Weldon. For example, in France, the human rights organization Amnesty International reports, “one out of ten women is victim of domestic violence.” Official data indicate that perpetrators of domestic violence kill on average one woman every three days in France. Violence against women, as spelled out in Article 1 of the 1993 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, refers to acts – happening specifically to women because they are women – that restrict, impair, or nullify women’s ability to exercise their equal rights and freedoms as citizens, that is, threats, coercion, and arbitrary deprivations of liberty that “result in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women” whether it happens “in public or private life.