The Council understands that the extent and range of violent actions perpetrated against women are broad. They can include offences as extreme as female genital mutilation, institutional abuse, trafficking of women, and sexual violence as a strategy in armed conflict. These are crimes and human rights abuses and must also be addressed through appropriate channels. However, for women in Australia, sexual assault and domestic and family violence are the most pervasive human rights violations. They harm and limit the lives of a third of Australian women, and require an immediate and focused response.
Sexual assault and domestic and family violence cannot be excused or justified under any circumstances. It is wrong, and all victims need compassionate and highly responsive support, and all perpetrators must be held accountable for their violence.
Overwhelmingly sexual assault and domestic and family violence is perpetrated by men against women. While the Council acknowledges that men can be victims of intimate partner violence and should also be supported with services tailored to their needs, the most recent national survey found that 17 per cent of women experienced sexual assault compared to 4.8 per cent of men. It also found that while an estimated 35 per cent of men and women have experienced physical assault since the age of 15, of the male victims, 65 per cent were assaulted by a male stranger, while 46 per cent of female victims were assaulted by a partner or ex-partner. Women are mostly assaulted by men they know, often in their own home, and in circumstances where they may well be subject to repeated assaults over time. Sexual violence, while committed by perpetrators across a wide range of relationship categories that includes friends and acquaintances, work colleagues, fathers and other close family members, is also committed by men with whom women have, or have had, an intimate relationship6.
While the dynamics of sexual assault and domestic and family violence differ, there is a high degree of connection between these phenomena. Thus responses can benefit from shared experience and solutions. The strategies in this Plan of Action target sexual assault and domestic and family violence perpetrated against women, and the consequent indirect abuse of their children.
The Plan of Action recognises that the broader Australian community has a critical role to play in the prevention of violence. Indeed the wider community, by implicitly condoning values and attitudes that support abusive behaviours, inadvertently contribute to violence against women. The Plan of Action sets out actions that involve the promotion of awareness of these issues in the whole community, so that the whole community can work towards the day that women and their children are guaranteed their safety.
Until that day comes, we must stand by women with the provision of support services that meet all their complex and diverse needs.
Our system of justice must also be responsive and deliver on its promise of justice; justice that is tangible and understood by victims of violence, and that contributes to their recovery. This will give effect to Australia’s obligations under various international human rights instruments, and will ensure that justice is equally accessible to women who need the protection of our laws to be free from violence. It will also ensure that our moral landscape matures regarding issues of violence against women and their children. The strategies and actions set out in the Plan of Action are directed toward these goals.
Though the criminal justice system has a critical role to play, violence against women will not stop until the perpetrators stop being violent. There must be a swift and certain response to perpetrators of violence from the criminal justice system, accompanied by effective strategies to change violent behaviour and to sustain non-violent behaviour. The Plan of Action identifies and responds to the need for evidence building, diversity, innovation and rigour in the design and delivery of perpetrator programs.
The Council is aware that community action, service responses, justice mechanisms, and programs to end violence, will be stifled unless systems work together effectively. As reflected in the actions set out in the Plan of Action, working effectively in coordination involves the interconnection of governance, planning and resource allocation across all levels of government, and at the level of local agencies. Systems coordination is critical in the delivery of services for women and their children, and in the dispensing of justice, including programs to end violence.
The Council is adamant that local solutions, owned by local communities, are critical to ensuring the viability and sustainability of the system.
The Council endorses the need to work with, and support, community action to end violence. This reinforces the Northern Territory Emergency Response Review Board report’s call for a return to supported community development approaches to end violence; and for an end to government attempts to 'deliver solutions off the back of a truck'.
The Plan of Action notes the pressing need to further develop the evidence base to gain a better understanding of trends in sexual assault and domestic and family violence. This evidence base will help guide policy, legislation, and programs that will ensure more effective and promising practices. The Council therefore recommends a National Centre of Excellence for the Prevention of Violence against Women be established to guide research, monitoring and evaluation in the areas of sexual assault and domestic and family violence. It is proposed that this Centre have national and international reach, linking with international observatories that monitor and influence practices in this area.
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Vision
The Council’s vision for Australia is that:
Women and their children live free from violence, within respectful relationships and in safe communities.
Values and principles
The Plan of Action is founded on seven core values and supporting principles:
We value safety
- All women and children have the right to safe and respectful relationships and to live free from violence.
- Violence against women and their children is wrong. It is a fundamental breach of human rights.
- The safety of women and their children who have experienced, or are experiencing, violence is paramount in any response.
- No law, policy or practice should jeopardise the safety or well-being of women and their children.
We value community responsibility
- The whole community is responsible for condemning and eliminating violence against women and their children.
- Preventing violence by developing a culture of respect must be a high priority for the community.
- The community has a responsibility to hold perpetrators of violence accountable, and to help them stop their violence.
We value equality and diversity
- Under Australian law, women and men have equal rights. Political, economic and social factors that create an imbalance between the genders must be addressed.
- Responses to violence against women and their children must recognise and address the unequal power relations and gender inequality that authorises violence; and recognise and address other factors such as race, class, age, sexuality, ethnicity and disability that intersect with gender to shape women’s experience of violence.
- Actions, policies and practices must be examined for unintended consequences, such as gender discrimination, and deliver real equality for women and their children.
- Policies and programs that increase women’s independence, including their financial independence, are integral to achieving gender equality.
- Any disadvantage arising as a consequence of the way in which diversity is understood and/or applied must be redressed.
- Initiatives to prevent or respond to violence must demonstrate that they adopt an intersectional framework which ensures all barriers to accessing services by women and their children, in all their diversity, have been eliminated. This should be a prerequisite for achieving recognition as a policy, program or practice of high standard.
We value responsiveness
- Governments must be responsible for ensuring that the service system for responding to violence against women and their children is adequately resourced and is well-coordinated and supported, so that every level of response will work efficiently and effectively.
- Appropriate and effective services must be available to victims/survivors and perpetrators in a timely manner, wherever they live.
- Service system responses to violence against women and their children must take account of differences among women.
- Integrated and coordinated responses to violence must draw on a range of specialist and mainstream services.
- Early intervention is essential to minimise the level and effects of violence against women and their children.
We value justice
- Victims/survivors and perpetrators must have access to processes and outcomes that are fair and just.
- Victims/survivors must have access to appropriate legal responses that enhance safety and uphold individuals’ rights.
- Perpetrators of violence must be held accountable, and accept responsibility for their actions. They must acknowledge the consequences of their behaviour, and be challenged and supported to stop their violent behaviour.
- Civil and criminal justice systems must acknowledge the unequal circumstances and contexts within which violence takes place, and this must be reflected in delivering just outcomes for victims/survivors and perpetrators.
We value durability
- Government commitments and investments must be made for the long-term.
- For durable change to take place, governments cannot do it all.
- Durable change must be built on community participation, ownership, and responsibility for, the problems, processes and outcomes.
- Durability requires community planning that does not fosters cooperation rather than local competition.
- Developing the capacity to engage genuinely and openly with communities, encouraging their active participation in determining the new future, is the challenge for all7.
We value knowledge and accountability
- Research evidence and practice wisdom must inform the development of approaches and delivery of responses to violence against women and their children.
- Evaluation and appropriate outcome measures must be built into all program designs and funding plans from the outset.
- Policy, legislation and practices must be monitored and evaluated to ensure that they are effective in preventing violence against women and their children, and in contributing to the knowledge base.
- The evidence base must be continually reviewed and strengthened, knowledge disseminated and opportunities for innovation promoted.
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References
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2005) Personal Safety Survey, Cat No. 4906.0, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Dimopoulos, M and Assafiri, H. (2004) ‘Pathologising NESB women and the construction of the ‘cultural defence’’ Point of contact: Responding to children and domestic violence. Partnerships Against Domestic Violence, Commonwealth of Australia.
Heise, L. (1998) ‘Violence against women: an international, ecological framework’, Violence Against Women, vol. 4.
Northern Territory Emergency Response Review Board (2008) Report of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Review Board. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Rees, S and Pease, B. (2006) Refugee Settlement, Safety and Wellbeing: Exploring Domestic and Family Violence in Refugee Communities - Paper Four of the Violence Against Women Community Attitudes Project. Melbourne: Immigrant Women’s Domestic Violence Service Incorporated and VicHealth.
Special Rapporteur on violence against women (2001) Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences to the World Conference Against Racism, UN Doc. A/CONF.189/PC/3/5, 27 July 2001.
Rudd MP, The Hon. K. Prime Minister of Australia (2008) Respecting Women and Leading Men. Speech to the White Ribbon Foundation Annual White Tie Dinner, 17 September 2008. Available from: (http://www.pm.gov.au/media/speech/2008/speech_0478.cfm) accessed February 2009.