Delivering his opening address to the daylong panel dedicated to women and human rights, Mr Türk said “extraordinary progress” had been made thanks to the global women’s movement.
But the very fact that a separate panel had to be convened on gender-based violence shows that progress is “hard-won and fragile,” he added.
The focus of the meeting on so-called Economic violence as part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence occurs when a woman or girl is denied access to financial resources as a form of abuse or control.
Mr Türk noted that one in three women has been a victim of some form of violence – physical, sexual, psychological or economic – at least once in their lives.
“If one in three men worldwide were exposed to such devastating and pervasive harm, an emergency summit would be called,” he said.
Unseen, unregulated
The High Commissioner said economic violence often goes unnoticed or unregulated, but can be as damaging as physical violence because it typically involves forms of control, exploitation and sabotage.
“Although economic violence usually took place at home, it could also be enabled and perpetrated by the state through discriminatory legal frameworks which limited women’s access to credit, employment, social protection or property and land rights,” he said.
Mr Türk stated that global efforts to achieve gender equality have so far failed, noting that 3.9 billion women worldwide faced legal barriers to their economic participation and that women only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men, among other inequalities.
Time to start over
Mr Türk said a thorough overhaul of discriminatory laws and practices is needed to end economic violence.
“Gender equality must be positively promoted through laws governing all aspects of life and policies must be put in place to ensure that these laws are implemented,” he said.
He further said that more efforts were needed to ensure that survivors of economic violence could receive justice and assistance.
“Better complaints mechanisms and economic and social support systems were neededmore widely available psychological support, and that perpetrators are brought to justice,” the High Commissioner said.
He stressed that violence against women and girls is “horrific and unforgivable”.
Civil
During the forum, members of civil society also spoke out about the damage caused by economic violence.
Esther Waweru, senior legal advisor at Equality Now, said inequality within the family was one of the main reasons for economic violence, combined with “retrogressive patriarchal gender norms.”
She said that 1.4 billion women worldwide live in countries where economic violence goes unrecognized and protections are lacking, a practice she said could leave more women and girls vulnerable to exploitation.
Ms Waweru recommends that Member States adopt comprehensive laws to criminalize sexual and gender-based violence and intimate partner violence, as well as economic violence.
She called for laws to “repeal and revoke the matrimonial power clauses that appoint spouses as heads of households” to ensure “fair distribution of the common property resulting from marriage” and equal employment rights.
