Violence Against Women And Girls Is One Of The Most Widespread, Persistent And Devastating Human Rights Violations

On October 3, 2023, Reem Alsalem, U.N. Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls told the United Nations General Assembly that “women and girls continue to be killed on the basis of their sex and gender, rendered more vulnerable to femicide when being women and girls intersect with other grounds or identities.” She added that “these regressions are happening while the world navigates multiple crises of war, climate change, poverty and pandemics that clearly have a gendered impact and affect women and girls unequally.” The U.N. Special Rapporteur’s newly published report explores the nexus between violence against women and girls, nationality laws and statelessness, with a view to assessing the way in which statelessness and gender-discriminatory nationality laws and practices function as a form of violence against women and girls. Commenting on the findings, she indicated that “we have painfully realized that we are nowhere near achieving Sustainable Development Goal 5 [achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls].”

Violence against women and girls is a pandemic that is far from being addressed. According to the World Health Organization, around 736 million women and girls are subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence from a non-partner. This number has remained largely unchanged over the past decade. Furthermore, reports suggest that younger women and girls remain particularly at risk of such violence, with one in four women aged 15 to 24 suffering violence at the hands of an intimate partner by the time they reach their mid-twenties.

Apart from violence, women and girls also continue to face gender-based discrimination with the nationality laws. Nationality laws in “over 80 countries are considered to be discriminatory. Of that number, almost 50 countries have nationality laws containing gender-discriminatory provisions, including with regard to women’s right to confer nationality on a non-citizen spouse or to acquire, change or retain nationality on an equal basis with men. In 24 countries, nationality laws deny women’s right to confer nationality on their children on an equal basis with men.” The U.N. Special Rapporteur concluded that “gender-discriminatory provisions in nationality laws undermine gender equality. They can also lead to statelessness and cause wide-ranging and multilayered forms of human rights violations, including sexual violence and gender-based violence.”

The U.N. Special Rapporteur explained that sex and gender-based discrimination in nationality laws is one of the major causes of statelessness: “statelessness and gender discriminatory nationality laws are tantamount to violence against women, as they constitute severe forms of discrimination against women and girls as defined by the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. They result in a vicious circle of human rights failures and violations, directly and indirectly exacerbating psychological, sexual, and physical violence.” Last, but not least, she found that “statelessness is an inherently political outcome, and gender-discriminatory nationality laws are reflections of the patriarchal and colonial power structures that govern other forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls.”

Citing the example of Iraq, the U.N. Special Rapporteur indicated the effect of such laws on the Yazidis in Iraq. She noted that “many Yazidi women have been forcibly married to Daesh members in Iraq. Any children born out of wedlock in such cases are then registered as Muslim under a fake father’s name, as the law does not allow for women to give their names to their children.”

The U.N. Special Rapporteur further found that “several countries prohibit minorities from becoming nationals of their countries, thereby rendering them stateless, in contravention of their international obligations.” The largest of these affected groups is the Rohingya Muslim minority, who predominantly reside in Rakhine state, Myanmar, and who have limited access to citizenship.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur identified several recommendations for States to address the issue of gender-based violence, discrimination and statelessness. A lot more work is needed not only to tick the box of Sustainable Development Goal 5 on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls but also to deliver meaningful change that will transform the lived reality of women and girls around the world.