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Prohibited Sexual Behavior and Sexual Violence
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Sexual Violence: Introduction 2
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Sexual violence is, for the most part, gender-based violence. As the United Nations stated in 1992:
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“Gender-based violence is a form of discrimination that seriously inhibits women's ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men …Traditional attitudes by which women are regarded as subordinate to men or as having stereotyped roles perpetuate widespread practices involving violence or coercion, such as family violence and abuse, forced marriage, dowry deaths, acid attacks and female circumcision. Such prejudices and practices may justify gender-based violence as a form of protection or control of women”.
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As we shall see in the following sections, there is also male sexual violence against males and female sexual violence against both females and males. However, in the overwhelming majority of cases the violence is indeed “gender-based”: Women are the victims and men are the offenders.
The United Nations against the discrimination of women
In 1979, the UN passed a Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and in 1992 it issued its General Recommendation Nr. 19 clarifying that gender-based violence is a form of discrimination. For the full text of this and all other Recommendations, click here. |
