This Weekly Round-Up comes to you at the end of Stop Street Harassment Week. AWAVA is proud to have participated in and co-sponsored this global event once again this year. We firmly believe that women and girls have the right to feel and be safe in private and in public. Street harassment is a form of gender-based violence and it MUST end!
You can see some of our activities on our Twitter Feed and Facebook page, or join the global conversation taking place on Twitter under #EndSHWeek
Around the Country
- Justice Peter McClellan, Chair of the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse, has stated that the Commission does not have the resources to completely investigate the huge number of plaints made to them
- Australian of the Year, Adam Goodes has spoken out “about his terrifying childhood“
- A proposed Victorian law to criminalise non-disclosure of child abuse has been met with concern about the status of victims of abuse, including a passionate response from Rosie Batty, mother of murdered 11-year-old Luke Batty
- The Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria has won the global Avon Communications Award for their booklet ‘Sex, Love and Other Stuff’
- The Commonwealth Government has announced an extension to the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness funding
- After discussion with the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Western Australian Government has committed to considering indefinite detention of people with disability in its current review of criminal legislation
- Reports of family violence in Aboriginal families in Victoria has almost tripled in the past five years
- In a landmark decision, the High Court has ruled that the NSW Registrar must recognise that a person may be neither male nor female
- In Victoria, Behaviour change programs aimed at stopping men from being violent will expand by more than 20 per cent with a $2.1 million funding boost from the Victorian Coalition Government
- Also in Victoria, a report says that “Victoria has severe shortage of public housing“
- There is growing recognition of the variety of ‘tricks’ and ‘loopholes’ used by defence counsel to attempt to make victims of violence retract their complaints
- On 3rd April, 2014 Community Law Australia held a social media Day of Action with community legal centres around Australia telling their stories on Facebook, and using the #unlockthelaw hashtag on Twitter.
- 13 year old Olive Bowler, “hits out at surfer sexism“
Around the World
- Dr Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the head of UN Women, has called for men to do more to ensure women’s rights and for ‘bold steps, not baby steps’ when it comes to the status of women
- Actress Angelina Jolie has visited Bosnia as part of a campaign against rape as a weapon of war
- In the UK, funding cuts have led to a significant decrease in services for victims and survivors of domestic violence
- In Zimbabwe, calls are being made for change across the whole of society in order to prevent and eliminate gender based violence
- In Brazil, “a recent government-sanctioned poll revealed that Brazilian men — and women — believe that if a woman shows off her body she deserves to be raped“
- A court in India has sentenced three men to hang, under a new law which carries the death penalty for those convicted of multiple sexual assaults.
- In the United States, April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month with events all over the country
- In Lebanon, a new law has been passed to criminalise domestic violence, however activists maintain that without amendments, including the criminalisation of marital rape, the law will be ineffective
- UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Rashida Manjoo, has begun an investigative mission in the UK at the invitation of the UK Government
Research and Reports
- Researchers from UNSW’s Gender Violence Research Network have launched a new report in conjunction with Ruby Gaea Darwin and the Northern Territory Working Women’s Centre: ‘Report on a scoping study into the effects of sexual violence on employees and the workplace’
- The Australian Institute of Family Studies have released ”
Resources
- Women’s Legal Services New South Wales have launched “When she talks to you about the violence: A toolkit for GPs in NSW“
Get Involved
- On 31st March, The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) released a Discussion Paper, Serious Invasions of Privacy in the Digital Era (DP 80, 2014). The Terms of Reference for this Inquiry ask the ALRC to consider the detailed legal design of a statutory cause of action and, in addition, other innovative ways the law might prevent or redress serious invasions of privacy. The ALRC is seeking feedback from the community on 47 proposals for reform outlined in the Discussion Paper including a new Commonwealth Act that would provide for a statutory cause of action for serious invasions of privacy.
**Articles published do not necessarily reflect the views of AWAVA and are included as items of interest only