By Jeanne Sarson, co-founder along with Linda MacDonald of Persons Against Non-State Torture (NST)

This blog exposes the never before exposure of the extensive global reality of the many forms of non-State torture victimizations that are being perpetrated against women and girls--women and girls being a collective group deemed as unequal in patriarchal societies. Non-State torture has been and is a human rights violation that has not been identified as a collective crime against the humanity of women and girls and that feminism needs to seriously consider.

There is no appropriate language that can justify the global patriarchal conditioning that has distorted this planet’s population into perceiving that Article 5 of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is solely the human right of men—of warring men. Article 5 says that no one—and “no one” means women and girls—shall be subjected to torture. In fact, no one has the right to torture another human being.

Back in 1993, when Linda MacDonald and I first began socially disclosing that private individuals and families perpetrated acts of torture against girls and women in the home, I initially wondered why we were considered “crazy ones”? I also wondered, and still do, why when speaking of such torture is it that a frequent response is to incorrectly rename torture as abuse or assault? I wonder because the crime of abuse or assault is a different crime than torture. I question why the person a woman discloses to reframes and renames the woman’s “torture” victimization to one of “abuse.” Women tell us they definitely feel not heard and even insulted when this renaming and reframing occurs. Elizabeth explained how she feels when the listener ignores her disclosure of torture victimization, saying: 

I do speak about torture. Sometimes I feel so isolated…like being in a place and no one talks my language…and I have to keep relating in their language even though it is not my language. It’s a social isolation difficult to describe. 

From a political standpoint, Linda and I have been repeatedly told we ought to accept what Canada has done. This “advice” suggests we adhere to the political perspective that the torture of women and girls in the private sphere is not as legally important as State torture victimization. In other words, Article 5 of the Universal Declaration that says “no one” should be subjected to torture is, in Canada, to be denied when women and girls are tortured in the domestic or private sphere. But Canada is not alone—global patriarchal legal discrimination and oppression has indoctrinated a social acceptance that when women and girls are tortured by private individuals or families their torture victimization and dehumanization does not need to be named and criminalized as a human rights torture crime. This is a position Linda and I refuse to accept.

Naming Torture Perpetrated by Private Individuals or Groups

In 2000, Amnesty International released the booklet, Respect, Protect, Fulfil – Women’s Human Rights: State Responsibility for Abuses by ‘Non-State Actors.’ It defines non-State actors to be individuals, groups, and corporations that are not employed by a State or country. This separates non-State actors from State actors who can be police or military officials for example who inflict State torture. Defining this term non-State actors helped Linda and I coin the term “non-State torture” (NST) and “non-State torturers.” The non-State torturers women identify are fathers, mothers, other family members, their like-minded friends, and others whose pleasure is torturing, especially sexualized torturing, of women when they were little girls or against women as adults. This human rights term of non-State torture names and explains the victimization women disclose to us.

Looking through a patriarchal lens it is clear that the “universality” of human rights is a male applicable concept. Although the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights supports a “rebellion against tyranny and oppression,” when viewed with a patriarchal lens this phrase is limited to men and the atrocities of warring. Rebellion against tyranny and oppression is not a message to women and girls to rise in rebellion against patriarchal oppression. Patriarchy has not conceived of the need to transform patriarchal tyranny and oppression by inclusive actions to ensure that women and girls are equally the “no one” referred to in article 5 of the Universal Declaration.

Decades of herstorical leaps from 1948 to 1987 when the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment entered into force, ignored was the prefix that reads:

            Recognizing…the inherent dignity of the human person,…

Having regard to article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which provide that no one (emphasis added) shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Ignored is that article 5 of the Universal Declaration refers to “no one”—which includes women and girls as “human person[s]” who are not to be subjected to torture. The Declaration is explicit. It does not proclaim that only males are persons with inherent dignity nor that article 5 is a human right solely of men—or warring men. But a patriarchal application effectively does—it obliterates females as “no one.” To the point of almost—almost—succeeding at having women believe that a feminist rebellion was not necessary because of a feminist failure to realize that a global “non-State torture war” existed that was ravaging millions of women and girls of all ages.   

Graveyards: A Place of Safety in the Torture Wars against Women and Girls

But feminist rebellion against patriarchal tyranny and oppression occurs in unescapably personal ways. For example, Jennifer Roy’s book Yellow Star,[1] features her conversation with her Aunt Syvia (now Sylvia), “one of the twelve” Jewish children who survived the ghetto the Germans erected when they invaded the Polish town of Lodz in 1939. Sylvia’s story is herstorical, reminding me of women’s and girls’ ongoing struggle in gaining freedom from torture, terror, and horror, regardless of who the torturers are—State or non-State torturers. Jennifer wrote about her aunt’s memory of her struggle to survive patriarchal State torture, terror, and horror (pp.71-72):

The Hole

 

Dig. Dig. Dig.

Papa works quickly,

scooping and tossing,

until there is a shallow hole

surrounded by mounds of dirt.

 

Papa stops digging…

he whispers, “get in and lie down.”

“You will hide here tonight.”…

 

Alone?...

But I am in a cemetery

in the dark,…

I scream:

I don’t want to die!

Papa…says,

“I will hide here with you.”

 

Why would I relate surviving non-State torture to Sylvia’s childhood graveyard herstory of escaping State torture? Because what jumped immediately into my memory is Jeanette’s herstory of hiding in a graveyard—of lying not in a hole, but of lying on top of the warm granite tombstones to gather into her body the radiant heat the sun had laid down on the granite for her. I say “for her” because like Sylvia, a graveyard provided a place of safety—for Sylvia hiding in a hole as darkness fell—for Jeanette as shelter from the cold as darkness fell. One difference between Jeanette’s and Sylvia’s survival stories is that Jeanette was alone whereas Sylvia was not. One herstorical similarity is that Jennifer wrote her Aunt Sylvia’s story in 2008, 63 years since the end of World War II; likewise, it has required 63 years for the United Nations Committee against Torture to write its 2008 General Comment No. 2 that torture by non-State actors occurs and is perpetrated against women in the domestic or private sphere. Validating Jeanette’s truth-telling that she survived torture, terror, and horror perpetrated by non-State actors. Yet, at the United Nations and State members’ level there has been no clarifying declaration made to acknowledge that article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says no one shall be subjected to torture applies equally to all human beings including women and girls.  

Unsilencing the Patriarchal “Non-State Torture War” on Women and Girls

Throughout our experience, Linda and I do know that, like Sylvia’s father, there are men who individually resist patriarchal otherization and dehumanization of women and girls. Again, based on our experience, some women participate in patriarchal misogynistic oppression of their own kind and are complicit in ignoring or participating in acts of non-State torture.[2] Jeanette and other women Linda and I have specifically and respectively know and support, who were born into or married into non-State torturing families, will continue to be “alone” if their “non-State torture war” truths remain silenced.

To cause a “rebellion against tyranny and oppression” as the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, demands unsilencing the patriarchal “non-State torture war” on women and girls as illustrated in Figure 1. It factually glares back at patriarchy to say that the infliction of non-State torture is a global human rights crime against the humanity of millions of women and girls. Figure I provides factual indicators that:

• One-third of women and girls over the age of 15 or 641 and up to 753 million “ever-married or partnered” suffer physical and sexualized violence at least once; however still invisible is that some women and girls will survive non-State torture that is perpetrated against them repeatedly for years or even decades.[3] Lynne, a Canadian woman was groomed, married, held captive, tortured, trafficked, and exploited in prostitution for four and one-half years by her husband and three of his male friends. Manfred Nowak, a previous United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, wrote in his 2008 report (A/HRC/7/3) that torture by non-State actors can occur in intimate partner relationships and in human trafficking such as Lynne suffered.  

• Sexualized non-State torture is inflicted by parents, family, and/or family friends against children beginning with newborns and can be ongoing for years or decades.  Such dehumanizing victimization of young children and predominately against children up to age eight and most often against girls is evidenced in the research by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and involves degrading acts, bestiality, bondage, and torture. The reality is, children are subjected to various forms of torture in everyday places. I selected the image of the baby lying in a baby chair because the chair looks like a safety pin. Women have informed Linda and me that safety pins are torture tools that were stuck into them when they were babies.

• About one million children, mainly girls, are exploited every year, commodified into commercialized sexualized exploitation and globally, 3.8 million were adults, mainly women. Within these millions an unknown and unnamed number are subjected to non-State torture victimizations. Some women tell us their victimization involved being internationally exploited both as children and adults. There is a link between human trafficking or exploitation and torture by non-state actors when States fail to protect by not acting with due diligence.

• Non-State torture is inflicted against women victimized in pornography including “snuff” or killing images and in prostitution. Women who were prostituted identify herstories of non-State torture victimization. Victor Joseph’s 2002 report Stolen Lives details the non-State torture of women prostituted and trafficked in India.

• Women and girls are affected by forms of modern slavery accounting for 28.7 million, or 71 per cent of the overall total of forced labour. Women’s domestic work makes up the largest share of forced labour and some women suffer non-State torture victimizations. For example, Nour Miyati was a domestic worker from Indonesia who was tortured by her employer—a non-State actor. Nour reported being immobilized by being tied up for a month. Gangrene developed in her fingers and toes which required amputation. Deprived of food and sleep and other injuries including having a tooth knocked out, damage to one eye, and her mouth taped shut to silence her screams.

• An estimated 12 million girls aged under 18 marry against their will each year which suggests that there are currently more than 650 million women and girls worldwide who were married as children. Of these some girls will suffer both child marriage and non-State torture victimizations. For instance, Sahar Gul was a “child bride” at 12 years. She was imprisoned in a basement, starved, her nails pulled out, burned with cigarettes, had her fingers broken and tortured with hot irons attempting to force her into prostitution, and more by the man she was “married” to and his family.

• United Nations Special Rapporteurs on torture have declared that cultural, traditional, and religious actions do amount to non-State torture. These include FGM. It is estimated between 200 million women and girls alive today and living in 31 countries have undergone FGM. As discussed by former United Nations Special Reporter Manfred Nowak in a side-event on torture, acid burning is a form of violence that amounts to torture perpetrated by private actors. In a 2012 report of India’s 40 million women widows are dehumanized as “it” and may suffer being prostituted as a consequence of traditional harmful practices. Widows including child widows are coerced into life-threatening practices in some global regions and some will suffer acts of violence that amount to torture codified as traditional practices as indicated in the 2018 report Millions of Child Widows Forgotten, Invisible and Vulnerable.   

Sustainable Development Goal 5

In 2015, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the Sustainable Development Summit set up 17 new Sustainable Development Goals to ensure a future that left “no one” behind and cared for our planet. I will focus on Gender Equality Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because it directly applies to naming and eliminating the non-State torture of women and girls in public and private spheres by 2030. Achieving Gender Equality targets include:

• Target No. 5.1 which aims to end discrimination against all women and girls;

• Target No. 5.2 which concentrates on eliminating all forms of violence against all women and girls in public and private spheres, and is reinforced by Target 16.2 with its focus to end abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence and torture against children, and,

• Target 5.3 to eliminate all harmful practices which refer to “child marriage” and FGM for example.

In fact, UN Women writes that all 17 SDGs depend on achieving Goal 5. Achieving the SDGs and the embedded targets are connected to articles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHRs) as figure 2 shows. More specifically this figure illustrates why there must be an assertive effort to officially name and declare that the “non-State torture war” perpetrated against women and girls must be made visible by naming the global forms of non-State torture victimizations. To do otherwise mean millions of girls and women will be left behind burdened in human inequality. As will the wellness of this planet be neglected given that planet wellness appears to be resting on achieving SDG 5.

[1] Roy, J. (2008). Yellow star. Scholastic Inc.

[2] Sarson, J., & MacDonald, L. (in print). Women unsilenced Our refusal to let torturer-traffickers win. FriesenPress.

[3] Sarson, J., & MacDonald, L. (2018). Having non-state torture recognized by the UN and member states as an infringement of woman’s human rights is imperative. Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme, 33(1. 2):143–155.

Photo by Sam Moqadam on Unsplash