integrated response to violence against women. This, the task force said, should be done through the development of services and preventative strategies and the improvement of legislation and law enforcement.
However two crucial components of the report were never implemented - a national strategy on violence against women and 'monitoring and evaluating systems' for the planning and delivery of the measures it proposes.
Also in 1997, a National Steering Committee on Violence Against Women was established to implement the task force's report. However according to Amnesty, this committee 'has not been enabled to adequately fulfil any of its original nine functions'.
Amnesty also notes that funding for frontline services, which offer essential support to victims, remains fixed at the 2003 allocation. This means that despite more people attempting to avail of these services, funding has not increased in two years.
"What Amnesty highlights in its report is pervasive and avoidable state failure to protect women from serious violations of their human rights", Mr Love said.
However Amnesty also emphasises the role Irish society should be playing in tackling this issue.
"We, Irish society, have both the power and the responsibility to finally end this abuse. Individuals are crucial to the eradication of this human rights violation. Violence against women is not a private matter - it is everyone's business."
The Amnesty report, Justice and Accountability: Stop Violence Against Women, was published in June, 2005.
Are you a Health Professional? Log on to IrishHealthPro for more...
|P(PRafter) Posted: 03/07/2005 21:11|
|Most disturbingly, the report seems to show that a bad situation is getting worse. Alcohol consumption too is increasing; the two are obviously closely linked. Thank you.|
|Patricia(GMC11099) Posted: 08/07/2005 14:44|
|Domestic violence has always existed. Unfortunately, all the emphasis is put on physical abuse and violence. Physical abuse is appalling and unspeakable, but far deeper scars are inflicted, permanently, by mental and psychological abuse. This is actually violence of a more disgusting kind. (Recommended reading: "Stalking the Soul" by psychiatrist Marie-France Hirigoyen. (excellent). Situational violence, fuelled by alcohol, is also appalling, but the dynamics are very different. There is physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse. The list is long. Most abusers abuse surreptitiously. They are "stealth abusers". You have to actually live with one in order to witness the abuse. There are three important categories of abuse: Overt Abuse The open and explicit abuse of another person. Threatening, coercing, beating, lying, berating, demeaning, chastising, insulting, humiliating, exploiting, ignoring ("silent treatment"), devaluing, unceremoniously discarding, verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse are all forms of overt abuse. Covert or Controlling Abuse Abuse is almost entirely about control. It is often a primitive and immature reaction to life circumstances in which the abuser (usually in his childhood) was rendered helpless. It is about re-exerting one's identity, re-establishing predictability, mastering the environment – human and physical. To the abuser, nothing exists outside himself. Meaningful others are extensions, internal, assimilated, objects – not external ones. Thus, losing control over a significant other – is equivalent to losing control of a limb, or of one's brain. It is terrifying. Independent or disobedient people evoke in the abuser the realization that something is wrong with his worldview, that he is not the centre of the world or its cause and that he cannot control .......""""|
|Anonymous Posted: 08/07/2005 15:20|
|Patricia - from a non-psychologists abuse, viewing it from a differnet angle, there are 3 types of abuse. Physcial - beating, punching, kicking etc. Verbal - which can be emotional or mental. And sexual - which is both physical and for the most part also mental|
|Blath Posted: 10/11/2005 13:45|
|I agree with both Patricia and Anonymous who pos