Violence Against Women and the Protocol on the Rights of Women

These are extracts from the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, available at http://www.pambazuka.org/petition/1/protocol.pdf

- "Violence against women" means all acts perpetrated against women which cause or could cause them physical, sexual, psychological, and economic harm, including the threat to take such acts; or to undertake the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on or deprivation of fundamental freedoms in private or public life in peace time and during situations of armed conflicts or of war...

- States Parties shall take appropriate and effective measures to:
a) enact and enforce laws to prohibit all forms of violence against women including unwanted or forced sex whether the violence takes place in private or public;
b) adopt such other legislative, administrative, social and economic measures as may be necessary to ensure the prevention, punishment and eradication of all forms of violence against women;
c) identify the causes and consequences of violence against women and take appropriate measures to prevent and eliminate such violence;
d) actively promote peace education through curricula and social communication in order to eradicate elements in traditional and cultural beliefs, practices and stereotypes which legitimise and exacerbate the persistence and tolerance of violence against women;
e) punish the perpetrators of violence against women and implement programmes for the rehabilitation of women victims;
f) establish mechanisms and accessible services for effective information, rehabilitation and reparation for victims of violence against women;
g) prevent and condemn trafficking in women, prosecute the perpetrators of such trafficking and protect those women most at risk;
h) prohibit all medical or scientific experiments on women without their informed consent; i) provide adequate budgetary and other resources for the implementation and monitoring of actions aimed at preventing and eradicating violence against women;
j) ensure that, in those countries where the death penalty still exists, not to carry out death sentences on pregnant or nursing women;
k) ensure that women and men enjoy equal rights in terms of access to refugee status determination procedures and that women refugees are accorded the full protection and benefits guaranteed under international refugee law, including their own identity and other documents.