A/74/148
I. Domestic violence as a human rights issue
1.
Domestic violence is perpetrated every day against millions of children, women
and men worldwide. It is experienced by all generations, nationalities, cultures and
religions and on all socioeconomic and educational levels of society. It constitutes a
major obstacle to the universal fulfilment of human rights and to the achievement of
the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and it severely damages the physical,
sexual, emotional, mental and social well-being of innumerable individuals and
families, often leaving lasting trauma not only on its direct victims but also within
entire communities. For countless people, it makes the home a place of danger,
humiliation and untold harm, rather than a place of refuge, trust and protection.
2.
In essence, domestic violence refers to “all acts of physical, sexual,
psychological or economic violence that occur within the family or domestic unit or
between former or current spouses or partners, whether or not the perpetrator shares
or has shared the same residence with the victim”. 1 Moreover, while a person’s home
is most commonly understood to be the family or foster home, it may also be a
communal care setting, whether community-based or institutional. On the basis of
that generic understanding, domestic violence includes a wi de range of abusive
conduct, from culpable neglect and abusive or coercive or excessively controlling
behaviour that aims to isolate, humiliate, intimidate or subordinate a person, to
various forms of physical violence, sexual abuse and even murder. In ter ms of the
intentionality, purposefulness and severity of the inflicted pain and suffering,
domestic violence often falls nothing short of torture and other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment (also referred to as “torture and ill-treatment”). It
is particularly concerning, therefore, that it remains both extremely widespread and
routinely trivialized.
3.
In quantitative terms, data provided by the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime indicate that, in 2017 alone, approximately 78,000 individuals (64 per cent
female and 36 per cent male) were killed by intimate partners or family members, 2 a
gruesome “tip of the iceberg” pointing towards a far greater number of victims that
are beaten, raped, threatened and humiliated in their own homes e very day. Indeed, it
has been estimated that, depending on the country, between 15 and 70 per cent of the
female population – and a worldwide average of 30 per cent of women – have suffered
intimate-partner violence at some point in their lives, 3 and that between 50 and 75 per
cent of children worldwide (up to 1 billion) experience physical, sexual, or emotional
violence at home. 4 Those staggering numbers are exacerbated by the fact that, in
general, the exposure of victims to domestic violence continues for many years and
often lasts an entire lifetime. Contrary to some perceptions, therefore, domestic
violence is neither an exceptional occurrence nor a matter of lesser importance, but
in fact represents one of the predominant sources of humiliation, violence and death
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1
2
3
4
19-11892
See Article 3 of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence
against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention).
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Global Study on Homicide: Gender-related Killing
of Women and Girls (2018), pp. 10–11.
World Health Organization (WHO), Multi-country study on women’s health and domestic
violence against women (Geneva, 2005).
Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence against Children,
Toward a world free from violence: Global survey on violence against children (New York,
2013); United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Child Disciplinary Practices at Home:
Evidence from a Range of Low- and Middle-Income Countries (New York, 2010); and UNICEF,
Hidden in Plain Sight: A statistical analysis of violence against children (New York, 2014),
pp. 165–166.
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