New Initiative to Protect Women from Torture
The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the Philippines Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA) open a call for participation for members of the OMCT SOS-Torture Network and strategic potential partners to join its Women and Torture Working Group. This new regional initiative will address a protection gap on women and torture through innovative and collective research and advocacy.
Torture and other ill-treatment of women is a fundamental violation of human rights and one which is absolutely prohibited under international law. In spite of this prohibition and the growing attention gender-based violence against women has received in the past three decades, women and girls continue to face high risks of becoming the victims of torture and other ill-treatment in many countries around the world, including in Asia.
Rooted in gender inequality, torture and other ill-treatment against women take many different forms including domestic violence, child and forced marriage, “honor” based crimes, trafficking, rape, and other sexual violence and slavery, and more. At the same time, women are frequently reluctant to report torture and refrain from searching for justice. As a result, torture and other ill-treatment of women goes unnoticed and perpetrators escape punishment.
The creation of a working group on the protection of women and girls from violence as a form of torture aims at highlighting this under-researched topic in Asia and at creating opportunities for Asian CSOs to connect their experience and data on gender-based violence against women with the anti-torture movement and theSOS-Torture Network.
The nine civil society representatives selected on the basis of this open call will form a working group that will launch a report based on reliable and comparative data that allows initiating an effective protection and advocacy agenda against torture and other ill-treatment for women at the national, regional and global level.
Supporting Documents:
Call for Participants
Motivation Letter
Letter of Engagement
For more information:
- OMCT: Nicole Bürli, Human Rights Adviser - Asia, nb@omct.org.
- PAHRA: Cristina Sevilla, Asia Human Rights Coordinator, atty.cristina.sevilla@philippinehumanrights.org.