Human Rights and Domestic Violence

The world in the 1990s witnessed a dramatic change in the ways in which countries treat issues of intrafamily or domestic violence against women.1 While most states once ignored the problem as a private matter, a large variety have now accepted some responsibility to help prevent violence in the home and to prosecute offenders. Some states have made minimal changes, pledging their allegiance to efforts to stamp out violence against women while in fact doing little about the problem. Even this discursive move marks a change from previous claims that states had little authority or ability in this area. Others have gone farther, enacting legislation that codifies domestic violence as a crime, creating national media campaigns designed to raise consciousness about the issue, and establishing women-only police stations intended to encourage reporting of domestic violence crimes. Nowhere is this change in state discourse and practices more pronounced than in the Americas. All major countries in the Organization of American States (OAS), save the United States and Canada, have ratified the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women, which is the only international treaty dedicated to preventing violence against women. States have ratified the treaty despite the fact that it has relatively strong monitoring mechanisms that allow any individual or group to lodge petitions with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) about state violations of their duties to protect women. Well before the treaty was signed, some American countries were among the first in the world to address domestic violence issues. As early as 1978, Canada began to