With their killing, the history of the international day for the elimination of violence against women was written

History...
The General Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and called on governments, international organisations and non-governmental organisations to organise activities on that day aimed at raising public awareness of the problem (resolution 54/134 of 17 December 1999).
Women's advocates have marked 25 November as a day against violence since 1981, and that date was drawn from the brutal assassination in 1961 of the three Mirabal sisters, who were active politicians in the Dominican Republic, on the orders of the Dominican ruler Rafael Trujillo, 1936-1961.
Despite the great developments women's reality has witnessed internationally since that date, violence still stains the brow of humanity as a mark of shame in the record of human civilisation, for the reality of humanity says that of every three women in the world at least one is subjected in her lifetime to beating, to coerced intercourse or to other kinds of assault and harm!!
International studies indicate the existence of more than 60 million females who were denied life and have become the "missing" women in the world today, as a result of selective abortions aimed at getting rid of females and the crimes of killing girls in the cradle!! Not a year passes without millions of women being raped at the hands of intimates, relatives, friends, strangers, employers, work colleagues, soldiers or members of armed groups!! Acts of violence against women have become so widespread during armed conflicts that they are like a spreading epidemic, and civilians, particularly women, have become principal targets aimed at by armed combatants,
Despite the principal effort of religions and humane doctrines in affirming mercy, compassion and gentleness among human beings, despite the scale of the harm humanity has incurred as a result of adopting violence as a tool of address and of positioning, and despite the fact that any human achievement depends on the pillars of stability, peace and amity, despite all this humanity still pays a heavy price in its security and stability as a result of adopting violence as a way of life.
The residues of the savage, aggressive approach are still lodged in the minds and behaviour of some of us in our dealings and our lives, on the ground of an approach of violence hostile to the other and devoid of tolerance and mercy. It is an old, new problem that settles in our human arena again and again to confiscate our human security and our human progress, for despite the enormous developments in human thought and action in keeping with civilisation and refinement, we still witness the dominance of the approach of violence in human dealings, particularly towards gentle beings such as women. It is a loathsome exploitation, that which employs the elements of strength one has and turns them into tyranny and domination through the coercive violence practised against the weaker.
The body of studies that have shed light on the phenomenon of violence against women, as causes and consequences, in order to spread human and national awareness of the dangers of this phenomenon and its catastrophic outcomes.
The latest report issued by the World Health Organisation has shown that violence costs states enormous material losses, and statistics indicate that the injuries resulting from violence cost states no less than 4% of gross domestic product, in addition to the bitter physical and psychological suffering.
The studies indicated that violence is one of the leading causes of death for the age group between 15 and 44 years.
Violence against women is behaviour or an act directed at a woman based on force, harshness and coercion, marked by varying degrees of discrimination, oppression, subjugation and aggression, arising from the unequal power relations between men and women in both society and the family, and taking psychological and physical forms varying in the harm they cause.
Violence against women varies between what is individual (egoistic violence), embodied in direct and indirect harm to the woman by hand, tongue or act of any kind; what is collective (collective violence), carried out by a human group on ethnic, sectarian or cultural grounds and taking the form of humiliation, exclusion or liquidation; and what is official (the violence of authority), embodied in political violence against the opposition and against the general groups of society.
When a woman falls victim to deliberate harm as a result of the approach of violence, she loses the humanity that is God's gift, and with the loss of her humanity any constructive role for her in the movement of life is negated.
It is the right of every human being not to be subjected to violence and to be treated on an equal footing with other human beings, as this is one of the basic human rights representing the truth of human existence and its essence, by and through which it is completed and elevated. When these rights are squandered, the human role will end in collapse and decline. Woman is man's counterpart in building life and enriching it with construction and progress, and life will not be set right and bear fruit if women's basic rights are sacrificed, foremost among them the right to life, security and dignity. Violence or the threat of it kills creativity by creating climates of fear and terror that follow the woman everywhere.
Violence, in its various forms, such as personal and domestic violence, the violence of wrong customs and traditions, the violence of authority and the violence of wars, requires legal legislation and a social culture that prevent its continuation, in order to guarantee the development of society, including the right to resort to means of redress and legal compensation, to obtain education and health care, and to protection from the state and civil society organisations.
As for family violence, it too has become an endemic affliction throughout the world, and the overwhelming majority of its victims are women and girls. In the United States, for example, women make up around 85 per cent of the victims of domestic violence.
The latest studies indicate that violence is a phenomenon common to all social and cultural classes, and that it is an adopted manner of dealing with women in both developing and developed societies.
Violence in figures
47% of women in Jordan are subjected to beating on a permanent basis.
95% of the victims of violence in France are women.
8 women out of every ten victims of violence in India.
In a survey covering 3,000 Croatian men, 85% of them admitted that they had beaten women, whether outside the family or inside it.
In Egypt, one woman in every three is beaten by her husband at least once during the marriage.
The international organisation for women (UNIFEM) also confirmed that the most widespread forms of violence directed against women in various parts of the world at present are circumcision operations, where 120 million girls a year undergo circumcision.
The data of Amnesty International indicate some aspects of the violence practised against women, which takes different forms, among them:
- Rape, to which 700 thousand women a year are subjected in the United States of America.
- The proportion of killings of women at the hands of their husbands is 50% of all killings in Bangladesh.
- In Britain the police receive a call every minute from women subjected to violence inside the home, asking for help.
- In South Africa 1,411 women a day are raped, one of the highest rates in the world.
- The last form of violence directed at women worldwide is violence in the labour market, where women work as domestic servants. This was confirmed by a study prepared by the University of Colombo, which stated that Sri Lanka is one of the world's largest exporters of domestic workers and that 25% of Sri Lankan women faced problems in practising this occupation, such as being assaulted or not being paid their wages.
The Sri Lankan Ministry of Labour also confirmed that the number of maids returning from abroad after being harmed reaches 50 maids a day, and they return in a state of suffering and complete collapse.
Violence as a means
Violence is taken as a means of subjugating women in order to achieve individual or collective, personal or official ends. Reality indicates that many women are subjected to particular kinds of violence because of their sexual identity, because of their ethnic and sectarian origin, their cultural and economic level, or their intellectual and political affiliation. During wars and armed conflicts, violence against women is often used as a weapon of war with the aim of stripping the woman of her humanity and oppressing the sect, class or state to which she belongs. As for women who are displaced from their homes fleeing violence or conflict, or who depart in search of safety and a better life, they often find themselves exposed to the danger of assault or exploitation with not the least mercy or protection.
The manifestations of violence
The manifestations of violence against women centre on the material and the moral (physical, psychological and sexual violence). Among the material manifestations of violence: beating, burning, killing, rape and denial of financial or proprietary rights. Among the moral manifestations of violence: the denial of security and reassurance, the lowering of dignity and standing, exclusion from role and function, and the disruption of balance and parity. All available means are used to achieve this, from insult, humiliation, contempt, abuse, deprivation, threat, domination, harm and physical liquidation.
Patterns of violence
1- Family violence: arising from the bad use of power towards the weaker inside the entity of the family. It is the most widespread pattern of violence, and its victims are mostly women and children inside the family. Some statistics in many countries of the world indicate that 20-50% of the women covered by the research had been beaten by the husband, and 52% of Palestinian women from Gaza and the West Bank were beaten at least once in the year 2000. 23% of them were pushed, kicked and knocked down, 33% slapped, 16% beaten with a stick or a belt, and 9% attacked with a sharp instrument by their husbands. 9% stated that they had been subjected to psychological violence, and 52% were subjected to insult, abuse and foul language and to being called humiliating names by their husbands. The matter reaches the point of a crisis requiring physical or psychological treatment, as a wide sample of American women said, 22-35% of whom said they had gone to hospital emergency departments as a result of domestic violence.
2- Social violence: arising from the deficient view of the woman as an existence, a role and a function. Fanaticism for certain ideas, propositions, customs and traditions that lower the woman's value has led to women being subjected to forms of subjugation and oppression. At times she is subjected to violence in her place of work by the manager or by work colleagues, such as insult, contempt, reduction of pay or its confiscation at times, and at times she is dismissed from work if her femininity is not exploited.
3- Political violence: arising from the coupling of the inferior view of the woman as a human being with her deprivation of her national standing within the modern state. It is embodied in regarding her as a being who does not deserve effective participation in political life. Therefore depriving the woman of the freedom to express her political opinion, not allowing her to take part in decision-making, and barring her from the right to vote and to take up positions in the state, are among the most important manifestations of political violence.
The causes of violence
Violence may be traced back to the following causes:
1- The wrong value-based view, which does not see a real and complete capacity in the woman as a human being with full humanity in rights and duties. This is what lays the foundation for a life built on marginalising and despising the woman.
2- General cultural backwardness and the ignorance it produces of the components of civilisation and human development, which must rise on the shoulders of woman and man alike within the equation of complementarity between them to make a purposeful and advanced life.
3- The bad use of authority, whether inside the family, the social class or the state, since it is built on arrogance and on crushing the rights of the weaker inside these social frameworks.
4- The guardianship of wrong social customs and traditions that prevent the growth of the woman's role and her creativity in enriching life with the elements of renaissance.
5- The weakness of the woman herself in claiming her human and national rights and in working to activate and grow her social, political and economic role.
6- Political despotism, which prevents the development of society as a whole and stands as a stumbling block before the modern building of the state and of authority.

7- The absence of democracy, with all it means of the rule of law and institutions, pluralism and respect for and acceptance of the other, as a culture and a mechanism governing society and the state so that it is able to respect its citizens, develop them and protect them.
8- The weight of stifling economic crises and the general violence they produce because of inflation, poverty, unemployment and need. The economic factor accounts for 45% of cases of violence against women.
9- The repercussions of catastrophic wars and the culture of violence they create, the spread of killing and the overriding of human rights, along with the destructive results they produce for the economy, security, cohesion and social peace.
10- The negative effects of educational, pedagogical, health and environmental deterioration, which paralyses the growth and development of society in all its segments.
The results of violence
Among the most important destructive results of adopting violence against women are the following:
- Destroying the woman's humanity and her human dignity.
- The loss of self-confidence and of the woman's own capacities as a human being.
- The general deterioration of her social and national role and function.
- The absence of the sense of security necessary for life and creativity.
- The inability to raise children and bring them up in a sound educational manner.
- Health deterioration that may reach the point of permanent disability.

- The woman's hatred of the man, which generates a crisis in building a life that must rise on their joint cooperation.
- Hatred of marriage and the consequent failure of the marital institution through the spread of divorce and family breakdown, which is reflected negatively on children through:
- The child's health deterioration.
- Deprivation of sleep and loss of concentration.
- Fear, anger, lack of self-confidence, anxiety.
- Lack of self-respect.
- The loss of the sense of childhood.
- Depression, frustration, isolation, the loss of friends, weak intimate contact with the family.

- Destructive behavioural effects such as taking aggression lightly and adopting violence against the other, accepting abuse at school or in the street, building a shaky personality in dealing with others, absence from school, and the growth of a propensity to delinquency.

Confronting violence

Fighting violence, as a human condition and a social phenomenon, is an integrated process in which the systems of legal legislation, judicial protection, qualitative social culture, economic growth and democratic political stability all support one another. The organs of the state and civil society with its active institutions must work in an integrated way to root out violence through modernising intellectual, educational, political and economic projects. Here a unified, advanced and objective conception of the woman's human and national situation must be found, along with work to guarantee the dominance of the woman's positive choices in her roles in life, and the development of the qualitative gains the woman achieves in the fields of life, particularly the educational and pedagogical.

A policy of comprehensive human development must also be adopted in order to form a qualitative human being capable of awareness, production, harmony, coexistence and continuous development. This is a social and national task that requires the creation of comprehensive programmes and projects taking into account all the factors of development in their various political, economic and civilisational forms. Any developmental progress will help in overcoming the obstacles the woman faces in her human and national journey.

Women's awareness also has an essential role in confronting violence, for the woman must know her human and national rights and how to defend them, and must not tolerate, make light of or keep silent about the stripping away of these rights, and must build an aware and independent entity for her human existence and her moral personality. The active forces of the women's community bear the responsibility of creating serious and purposeful civil institutions to defend the woman and safeguard her existence and her rights.

Aware religious, intellectual and political elites are also of decisive importance in making a life built on the values of tolerance, security and peace. In this framework, the violence to which the woman is subjected must be publicly denounced, women must be listened to and supported in obtaining their rights, and officials must also be confronted if they fail to prevent acts of violence against women, to punish their perpetrators and to do justice to their victims, along with the rejection of ideas and traditions that lower the woman's standing and detract from her humanity, her role and her function.

There is also no escape from working to provide the infrastructure for the woman's growth and her own development, such as the establishment of modern educational, cultural and training institutions that help in explaining and simplifying subjects, whether educational, health, social or political, in order to guarantee her rapid progress.

There must also be women's activism towards forming civil institutions to preserve her human and national entity, and these institutions must be built on collective work relying on the results of scientific research and on field studies, so that women's associations and institutions can become realistically involved in the crucible of a civil society that guards democracy and human rights.

The media have a great role in making an advanced culture towards the woman as an existence, a message and a human and national role. They therefore bear a double responsibility for creating a culture of gentleness and mercy in private and public human relations. The various media must adopt a constructive policy towards the woman and one that excludes the culture of violence practised against her. For example, the stereotyped image given to the woman in the media, as having an inferior mentality or a scheming, conspiratorial or superficial and unserious one, must be avoided. It is also required that media programmes whose content deals with solving human problems and family disputes through violence, harshness and force be avoided, with a focus on solving contentious matters inside the human and family circle through understanding, logic and a high scientific and moral method.