The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Law on domestic violence lauded

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Friday, Nov 03, 2006
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Law on domestic violence lauded

Special Correspondent

Ann Stewart delivering a lecture in Bangalore on Thursday. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

Bangalore: The recently implemented Act on domestic violence is a well thought out piece of legislation that not only defines a number of ways in which violence is perpetrated, but also has strategies of implementation built within its framework, according to Ann Stewart of School of Law, Warwick University, United Kingdom.

But it was also important to ask if laws always led to changes in social attitudes, she said, in a lecture on "Gender and law: U.K. and India perspectives," organised by the Centre for Women's Studies, Bangalore University, here on Thursday.

The relationship between law and social and cultural norms was always debatable and this was borne out by statistics, said Prof. Stewart. As a case in point, she spoke of how the criminal justice system had worked in relation to rape convictions.

There were special laws in the U.K. on sexual abuse and there had been a steady increase in the number of cases reported.

A series of programmes with the police, prosecutors and to some extent even judges had ensured at least a degree of gender sensitivity in dealing with the cases. But the rate of conviction remained as low as six per cent. This, she said, was because the final judgement was passed by the jury which was a cluster of representatives from the community who carried with them the prejudices of society.

Another tricky area of law in the U.K., she said, was where the question of religious and cultural minorities were involved, such as in cases of forced marriages and honour killings. This was where the rights of a woman were often seen as running contrary to the rights of a community.

It was important, said Prof. Stewart, to build alliances among human rights groups, women's organisations and the legal and welfare arms of the state to ensure protection to women.

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