Safer Sooner: A Report by Every Woman Institute
On February 20, 2020, the Every Woman Institute released its first-ever Safer Sooner Report.
For many women around the world, there is no easy path to justice. Laws, government systems, and social norms favor perpetrators. In courtrooms, media, communities, and homes across the world, female victims of violence are often blamed, ignored, and not believed, entrenching the world in a system of silence and impunity.
The international community has come together to solve the problem through various instruments, including regional treaties, recommendations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and treaties specific to a certain form of violence, such as torture and trafficking. The lack of a binding global framework specific to violence against women and girls has resulted in a patchwork of protection with wide normative, geographical, and enforcement gaps in women’s safety.
The supermajority of the world’s women lack access to a treaty that specifically addresses violence against women. “Over the last six years, from 2013 to 2019, the Every Woman Global Working Group engaged in a global, inclusive dialogue on the need for a treaty and conducted deep analysis of the existing legal framework with members of the Every Woman coalition and additional experts. The global consultation found that a binding global norm would close the existing normative, geographic, and implementation gaps in women’s security, as well as provide global backup to existing mechanisms, and create a framework at the highest level of international law in which all entities, from governments to civil society to the UN, could work together to eradicate this human rights crisis.
This report reflects over six years of research and dialogue with 1,700 leaders and 843 organizations from 128 countries. These experts, organizations, and community leaders all came to the consensus that the Every Woman Treaty, a stand alone treaty to end, and prevent, violence against women and girls, is the best next step.
You can read the report on the Every Woman Treaty Website here.