Control of productive assets such as land, apart from public awareness and improved laws, helps prevent violence against women despite values suppressing them worldwide, says an expert.
Madu Mehra of a regional non government organization, Partners for Law in Development, said on Monday women need to be in control of productive assets to give them more bargaining power.
"Beginning from the family, all the productive sources and property are controlled by men, so women are forced into a situation that make them depen-dent and therefore manipulated into different situations where inequality continues", making them vulnerable to discrimination and violence, Mehra said after talks here held by the National Commission for Violence against Women.
The event coincides with the Commission's 10th anniversary and the worldwide "16 days of action against violence against women" from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10, which is the International Day of Human Rights.
Mehra is an author of the report on the review of the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women after 15 years.
Despite progress Mehra said it was now important to overcome the roots of violence against women, being values "which puts women's purity on a pedestal" and the lack of control over assets.
Via significant progress con-tributed by the UN, several countries now have laws on domestic violence, said Mehra, and that sexual assault on women during times of conflict is considered a war crime.
However women's control over assets is still lagging as governments cite customs or religion as holding back the changing of inheritance laws to benefit women, she said.
As various forms of violence continue because family and cultural structures allow them, she said governments should find ways to help change these structures which see women's obe-dience as natural in patriarchal societies.
Public education, changing laws and bringing about economic equality are among the approaches needed, she said.
Micro credits must be accompanied with efforts to change such values, she said.
In a written statement, Rashida Manjoo, the current UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, said she would among others further address "prevention strategies ... in challenging patriarchal interpretations of norms, values and rights."
In response to whether regional mechanisms could help women's causes in the region, Singa-porean activist Vivienne Wee said people of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should use the latest agreements to their advantage.
Wee, chair of Singapore's Institute for Women's Empowerment, said the ASEAN Intergovernmental Human Rights Commission "has to ensure greater compliance" with various UN human rights conventions ratified by its 10 member states including the UN convention on ending discrimination against women.
Despite criticism over its watered down mandate, Wee said it is up to the people of ASEAN to use the Commission and the ASEAN Human Rights Charter which "provides an opportunity" through its stressing of promotion of education on human rights.
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