From times immemorial, women have been treated as second-class citizens. But the last three decades have witnessed a great leap in the struggle for women?s rights. A lot has been done but much remains to be accomplished. For countless women, home is not a refuge but a place of terror. Every day, women are beaten and sexually assaulted by husbands, fathers, and other family members.

All too often, violence against women in the family is considered a private matter and not treated by the authorities as a crime. However, all governments are responsible for protecting their citizens from abuse, whether committed by officials or by private individuals. If a state fails to prevent, investigate and punish acts of violence against women with sufficient diligence, then it shares responsibility for the abuses.

Violence in the family includes battering by intimate partners and others, sexual abuse of female children and young women, marital rape and traditional practices harmful to women. Abuse of domestic workers can also be considered in this category.

Close relatives

In 2004, Amnesty International (AI) launched a global Stop Violence Against Women (SVAW) campaign to be carried on up to 2010. Amnesty International?s campaign is designed to mobilize both men and women and to use the power and persuasion of the human rights framework in the effort to stop violence against women.

Many women face physical, sexual and mental abuse at the hands of close relatives or strangers and communities tolerate violence against women. Local, regional and national authorities fail to prevent and punish acts of violence, and do not provide an environment free from violence.

Amnesty International Mauritius Section (AIMS) organized various activities for the SVAW campaign throughout the island and eventually a report was drafted and sent to the prime minister to sensitise the government on the role of the state to stop VAW. The law criminalizes domestic violence and provides the judicial system with power to combat this problem. However, in practice, domestic violence, particularly spousal abuse, is still a major problem. Many victims choose not to report their attacker, presumably due to cultural pressures.

The law also criminalizes the abandonment of one?s family or pregnant spouse for more than two months, the non-payment of court ordered food support and sexual harassment, still many women remain in abusive situations for fear of losing spousal financial support. A magistrate can order a spouse to pay child support, but there are reports that some spouses stop working to avoid payment.

Spousal rape

The Sex Discrimination Division of the National Human Rights Commission received 59 complaints in 2005. The law prohibits rape, including spousal rape, and the police and judicial system enforce the laws; but still many cases are registered everyday.

AIMS reiterated its action by contracting a roving theatre, ?Nu Traverse? by our famous playwright, Henri Favory. This play on VAW was staged in not less than 40 places around Mauritius in 2006, from Rivière-du-Rempart to Le Morne passing through Roche-Bois and was viewed by about 4,000 people. It was also viewed by boys and girls in secondary colleges.

This play helped women to come out of their silence and share what they were living in their everyday life, and students came to us and related the fear of violence in which they live in their homes and how they witness their mothers enduring such difficult situations and being helpless while breeding a sense of revolt against the perpetrator (the father) .

AIMS has put up a ?Men-to-Men? platform to help bring down VAW but, without the political will to take severe sanctions against these non-state actors perpetrating this violence, VAW will persist. Just putting up shelters for women will not help if attitudes, prejudices and social beliefs that foster and reinforce violence against women are not changed.

Amnesty International is collaborating with women?s rights activists and groups already working to expose and redress forms of violence. Amnesty International investigates and exposes acts of violence against women and demands that these violations are acknowledged, publicly condemned and redressed.

Amnesty Mauritius [email protected]