Critiquing \u3cem\u3eMatter of A-B-\u3c/em\u3e: An Uncertain Future in Asylum Proceedings for Women Fleeing Intimate Partner Violence

The #MeToo movement has brought renewed attention to the impact of gender inequality on our society’s ability to provide protection to women from physical and sexual violence, including intimate partner violence. Despite advances in legal protections and increased resources to prevent, prosecute, and bring an end to intimate partner violence, in the absence of true efforts to combat gender inequality as a whole, intimate partner violence will continue to pervade our society. The discussion of gender inequality’s impact on the treatment of intimate partner violence must expand beyond the violence that occurs in the United States to gender inequality’s impact on the protection afforded to women who have suffered this violence in other countries and seek protection from the United States. This is because U.S. asylum law trails decades behind even our flawed federal and state protections for victims of intimate partner violence. The male-centric lens through which the refugee definition was drafted and is interpreted continues to inhibit any progress in recognizing women’s asylum claims involving intimate partner violence. This Article finds that Matter of A-B- returns to the perception that intimate partner violence is a personal matter outside the scope of asylum protections. The decision demonstrates continued ignorance regarding the underlying reasons for intimate partner violence against women—gender and subordination. The failure to recognize that intimate partner violence occurs because of a woman’s gender is one of the primary obstacles to improvements in the treatment of asylum claims involving intimate partner violence. This Article contrasts the lack of progress in U.S. asylum law to provide protection to women who suffer intimate partner violence outside the United States with the advancements made in federal and state efforts to combat intimate partner violence occurring inside the United States. As a remedy, this Article recommends new legislation and regulations recognizing and guiding adjudication of these asylum claims, combined with judicial training and the development of a tracking mechanism for determinations in these types of cases. The current commitment to eradicating gender inequality within the United States is the perfect moment for reforming how we treat gender inequality when it occurs outside the United States

The scourge of gender-based violence (GBV) on women plaguing South Africa

Despite the existence of a constitutional legal framework, criminal sanctions to address violent behaviour by men are not enough. The killing of women by men has reached a disproportionate crescendo in South Africa. It is critical, that as a society we denounce the continuation of this trend and address the underlying causes of violent masculinity and physical abuse against women. Social norms, religious and traditional values, patriarchy, and gender relationships contribute to dominant notions of masculinity, which eventually undermine women's inalienable right of existence. Developing strategies to mitigate against intimate partner Gender-Based Violence is imperatively needed to curb these physical attacks on women. The purpose of this article is to highlight some forms and the causes of Gender-Based Violence, the impact of it, and with aim of finding lasting solutions to it. Some of the findings of the author are, first, religion has played a fundamental role to perpetuate gender-based Violence on women over time. Second, a clear understanding of different types of Gender-Based Violence is needed by both men and women in society before. Gender-Based Violence if not controlled and eliminated can lead to femicide as we have seen in South Africa in recent years. Third, more protective laws for women need to be properly implemented within our criminal justice process. Tougher and stiffer punishment for perpetrators of Gender-Based Violence is needed to curb the scourge of femicide, plaguing us in South Africa

Estimating the costs of gender-based violence in the European Union

The purpose of the study is to identify and recommend appropriate methodologies to measure the cost of gender-based and intimate partner violence in EU-28 Member States. To define gender-based and intimate partner violence for this study we draw on the definitions advanced by the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (UN 1993) and Council of Europe (2011) respectively. These authorities focus on the forms of violence, violence perpetrated by intimate partners and other family members (domestic violence) and sexual violence that are disproportionality perpetrated against and disproportionality impact women

Intimate Partner Violence in Immigrant and Refugee Communities: Challenges, Promising Practices and Recommendations

Reviews research on intimate partner violence in immigrant and refugee communities and examines victims' needs, challenges for agencies, and promising practices for prevention. Makes recommendations for funders, service providers, and policy makers

Law and Justice are not Always the Same : Creating Community-Based Justice Forums for People Subjected to Intimate Partner Abuse

What constitutes justice in cases involving intimate partner abuse has historically been determined not by the person subjected to abuse, but rather an actor within the legal system—a police officer, a prosecutor, an advocate, or a judge—and those individuals most often define justice in terms of what the legal system has to offer. People subjected to abuse may conceive of justice quite differently, however, in ways that the legal system is not well suited to address. For people subjected to abuse who are interested in punishment, whose goals are congruent with the legal system’s goals of safety and accountability (as defined by the state), and who are willing to use state based systems, society offers a response: the criminal justice system. Imperfect though that response might be, in theory it meets the justice needs of some people subjected to abuse. For people who are more interested in healing and are willing to work through state systems, society also offers a response, albeit a more limited one: restorative justice. But for those who are not interested in a state-based response, little by way of justice exists for people subjected to abuse. This article seeks to fill that void by suggesting the development of community based forums to deliver justice. In her 2003 article, Battering, Forgiveness and Redemption, law professor Brenda Smith suggested a number of alternative models that might be used to address intimate partner abuse. Building on her work, and recognizing that there are parallels between the experiences of people seeking justice for violations of human rights and people subjected to intimate partner abuse, this article borrows from the structures used to find justice after atrocity, including truth commissions and community-based courts, to flesh out what community-based justice forums to address intimate partner abuse might look like. The article imagines how international human rights processes might productively inform efforts to create new alternatives for finding individualized justice, voice, validation and vindication outside of the criminal justice system and considers the crucial questions that such a radical reimagining of justice provision raises--about the role of the state, the problems of gendered justice, the existence of community, and the provision of resources

Discounting Women: Doubting Domestic Violence Survivors’ Credibility and Dismissing Their Experiences

In recent months, we’ve seen an unprecedented wave of testimonials about the serious harms women all too frequently endure. The #MeToo moment, the #WhyIStayed campaign, and the Larry Nassar sentencing hearings have raised public awareness not only about workplace harassment, domestic violence, and sexual abuse, but also about how routinely women survivors face a Gaslight-style gauntlet of doubt, disbelief, and outright dismissal of their stories. This pattern is particularly disturbing in the justice system, where women face a legal twilight zone: laws meant to protect them and deter further abuse often fail to achieve their purpose, because women telling stories of abuse by their male partners are simply not believed. To fully grasp the nature of this new moment in gendered power relations—and to cement the significant gains won by these public campaigns—we need to take a full, considered look at when, how, and why the justice system and other key social institutions discount women’s credibility. We use the lens of intimate partner violence to examine the ways in which women’s credibility is discounted in a range of legal and social service system settings. First, judges and others improperly discount as implausible women’s stories of abuse, based on a failure to understand both the symptoms arising from neurological and psychological trauma, and the practical constraints on survivors’ lives. Second, gatekeepers unjustly discount women’s personal trustworthiness, based on both inaccurate interpretations of survivors’ courtroom demeanor and negative cultural stereotypes about women and their motivations for seeking assistance. Moreover, even when a woman manages to overcome all the initial modes of institutional skepticism that minimize her account of abuse, she often finds that the systems designed to furnish her with help and protection dismiss the importance of her experiences. Instead, all too often, the arbiters of justice and social welfare adopt and enforce legal and social policies and practices with little regard for how they perpetuate patterns of abuse. Two distinct harms arise from this pervasive pattern of credibility discounting and experiential dismissal. First, the discrediting of survivors constitutes its own psychic injury—an institutional betrayal that echoes the psychological abuse women suffer at the hands of individual perpetrators. Second, the pronounced, nearly instinctive penchant for devaluing women’s testimony is so deeply embedded within survivors’ experience that it becomes a potent, independent obstacle to their efforts to obtain safety and justice. The reflexive discounting of women’s stories of domestic violence finds analogs among the kindred diminutions and dismissals that harm so many other women who resist the abusive exercise of male power, from survivors of workplace harassment to victims of sexual assault on and off campus. For these women, too, credibility discounts both deepen the harm they experience and create yet another impediment to healing and justice. Concrete, systematic reforms are needed to eradicate these unjust, gender-based credibility discounts and experiential dismissals, and to enable women subjected to male abuses of power at long last to trust the responsiveness of the justice system