INCEST: Murder of the Soul: Chapter One
violence are not able to reveal the depth of the problem, the declaration made sure to call
on states to promote research, collect data and compile statistics, especially concerning
domestic violence and relating to the prevalence of different forms of violence against
women. It encouraged research on the causes, nature, seriousness and consequences of
violence against women and on the effectiveness of measures implemented to prevent and
redress violence against women. Whatever statistics were to be compiled and findings
arrived at were also to be made available to the public.
With the source of violence against women understood to be based on the prevalence of
social and cultural concepts forwarding the superiority of men to women, the declaration
was sure to include the call for states to adopt all appropriate measures, especially in
the field of education, to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and
women. This would be part of a larger effort to attempt to eliminate prejudices, customary
practices and all other practices which would be based on the idea of the inferiority or
superiority of either of the sexes and on stereotyped roles for men and women.
2. Resolution (1) of the Beijing World Conference on Women (September, 1995)
The World Conference on Women was held in Beijing from 4 - 15 September 1995
on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, with the intention to
advance equality, development and peace for all women everywhere in the world. The
aim of the platform for action was to achieve the full and effective implementation of the
Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women. These strategies
were meant to promote the advancement of women, and eliminate obstacles to women’s
active participation in all spheres of private and public life through a full and equal share
in economic, social, political and cultural decision making. The platform also aimed to
prevent all forms of violence against women throughout the different stages of their lives.
It attached special attention to girl child in this context and urged states to implement the
human rights of women and of the girl child as an inalienable, integral and indivisible part
of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Incest was discussed in the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in the context
of molestation and sexual attraction within the family or outside the frame of the family.
Furthermore, it stressed that states should adopt the appropriate measures that would
prevent violence against women throughout the different stages of their lives, including
violence within the family under any excuse, custom or religious consideration. It also
urged states to fulfill their obligations to eliminate violence against women under the
declaration on elimination of violence against women. States were asked to include into
their national laws criminal and civil penalties or administrative penalties to punish those
who caused harm to women and girls subjected to any form of violence in the family,
workplace, local community or in the wider society. There were provision to provide
redress for women against any damage and adopt and\or implement the laws set forth for
eliminating and preventing violence against women and pursuing its perpetrators. States
were urged to evaluate and analyze these laws on an ongoing basis to guarantee their
effectiveness, adopt appropriate measures to ensure protection for women, enable them
to have access to justice, redress, treatment and rehabilitate those who practiced violence
against them.
The Beijing Platform for Action called for implementation on the elimination of all
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