Experts review China's practice of anti-domestic violence law

By Wu Jin
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, August 30, 2016
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There is a Chinese proverb that says family issues are not for the public. But the recent legal enforcement of the rights of people suffering domestic violence in the country tells a different story.

The enactment of anti-domestic violence law in China last year has been considered one of the country's biggest steps to empowering victims seeking legal protection, said Julie Broussard, the UN Women Country Programme Manager in Beijing.

"Violence against women is not a private issue," Broussard said in her opening remarks at the Consultation Meeting on Implementation of Domestic Violence Law with Meaningful Engagement of Women Groups and Civil Society Organizations (COS) on Monday in Beijing. She called for victims inflicted by domestic violence to break their silence and learn about their legal rights.

The two-and-half day symposium, which opened on Aug. 28, focused on gender equality and anti-domestic violence measures in hopes of helping local women groups and social organizations provide their services in a more professional, comprehensive and effective way.

The anti-domestic violence law should never be singled out as an isolated legal system; on the contrary it involves a number of departments and sectors and interrelates with a comprehensive set of laws and regulations, said Qi Jianjian, Associate Professor of Law Institute at the China Academy of Social Sciences.

"We can collect big data from anti-domestic violence cases with the participation of numerous departments, institutions and social organizations in order to extend our influence by reflecting the tendencies and development of anti-domestic violence issues," Qi said.

Gender equality is considered an important issue for women when combating a patriarchal society, said Li Hongtao, a professor at China Women's University.

"We women still adopt our fathers' surnames, have men as the heads of the household and suffer humiliation when going through divorced," said Li. "The anti-domestic violence law is a critical attack against the old culture."

However, Li continued, the conciliation of family issues is a complicated task that cannot be fully effective when social workers only take action on a superficial level.

According to the professor, sometimes extreme domestic violence cases should not be mediated, because it may bring more danger to victims, while on other occasions, social workers are dissuaded to ask the victims to divorce when they don't have a full picture of the victims' families.

Experts believe that the implementation of anti-domestic violence law requires multilateral coordination involving government agencies responsible for civil affairs, social organizations and public security.

The police should intervene in domestic violence cases by issuing a warning to the perpetrators and monitoring their ensuing behaviors. The law issued in 2015 also covers marginalized groups of people, such as those living in cohabitation or fostered out of wedlock.

The symposium also gave floor to foreign experts who presented their countries' efforts in eliminating domestic violence.

Rosa Logar, the executive of the Vienna Intervention Center on Violence in the Family, said that a survey conducted in 2014 across 27 countries in the European Union showed that 62 million women – or one third of women in those countries – experienced physical or sexual abuse after the age of 15.

In August, 2014, the Istanbul Convention initiated by the European Council for the "Policy, Prevention, Provision, Protection and Prosecution" against domestic violence took effect. The signatories of the convention, including, Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France and the Netherlands, have expanded to more than 20 countries.

Logar said that anti-domestic violence initiatives in Austria started as early as 1978 in a population of more than 8 million people.

Kerstin Schinnerl, an expert from the Vienna Intervention Center on Violence in the Family highlighted the importance of education, saying, "Victims are empowered after being educated about their rights."

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