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Safer Towns, Cities and Public Spaces for Women

Issued : Friday 29 May, 2009

In 1993 the United Nations provided the first internationally agreed definition of Violence Against Women in its Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women:

"any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats such as acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life".

In 1995, Women's Aid published the first research into domestic violence in Ireland entitled Making the Links. One of the recommendations of this research was that an Interdepartmental Taskforce on violence against women be set up, to include members of Governmental and non-governmental bodies.

This recommendation was implemented by the Rainbow Coalition the following year with the establishment of the Taskforce on Violence Against Women, chaired by Labour Party Minister, Eithne Fitzgerald, TD. The Task Force produced its report in April 1997, setting out many progressive recommendations, some of which have been acted upon in the intervening years, while some are in the process of being acted upon, albeit inadequately or too slowly.

In December 2006 Labour Women produced a policy document entitled Violence against Women as a contribution by the Labour Party to the '16 Years of 16 Days Campaign' to end violence against women and as an information, communications and awareness resource on the issue of violence against women and on Labour's principles and policy direction on this issue.

The Labour Party has also acted to tackle domestic violence at international level. Working with our sister parties in the Party of European Socialists, Labour was instrumental in first establishing and then expanding successive EU Daphne Programmes, the specific EU programme to prevent and combat domestic violence against children, young people and women and to protect victims and groups at risk.

At the 2002-03 Convention on the Future of Europe, which prepared the draft Constitutional Treaty, Labour's representative Proinsias De Rossa MEP supported the campaign to insert a commitment to tackling domestic violence in the European Union Treaties. This campaign was successful with Declaration 19 of the Lisbon Treaty now reading:

The (Intergovernmental) Conference agrees that, in its general efforts to eliminate inequalities between women and men, the Union will aim in its different policies to combat all kinds of domestic violence. The Member States should take all necessary measures to prevent and punish these criminal acts and to support and protect the victims.