Development of the content of the positive obligations of the State to combat domestic violence in the practice of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

The domestic violence issue has become one of the most debated in Russian society over the past few years. Despite the fact that the international community has been considering domestic violence as a violation of human rights for several decades, among Russian lawyers a scientific discussion on this topic has begun to rise quite recently. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is one of the fundamental documents in the field of protecting women from domestic violence. Despite the Convention does not contain direct provisions on domestic violence, the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women established to monitor the implementation of the norms of the Convention by the State Parties has become a driving force for recognizing domestic violence as a form of gender-based discrimination against women. Due to the legal position of the Committee, domestic violence against women is considered a rude violation of human rights, which requires the State to fulfill a number of obligations in this area. The author provides an overview of the legal positions of the Committee, establishing positive obligations of the State in the field of combating domestic violence, based on the general principle to respect, to protect and to fulfill human rights. The positive obligations of the state to combat domestic violence, as set out in the General Recommendations, are reflected in the jurisprudence of the Committee. For the period from 1989 to 2017, the Committee not only stated that the right of women not to be subjected to domestic violence is protected, but also managed to international law standards in this area, defining a wide range of material and procedural obligations that are imposed on the States. Today despite the Russian Federation is subjected to criticism of the Committee, it does not make any necessary efforts to fulfill its obligations to combat domestic violence. These circumstances lead to the fact that victims of domestic violence remain without effective protection of the law.

About the author: Marie Davtyan – lawyer, Ph.D. student, Faculty of Law, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.

Citation: Davtyan M. (2019) Razvitiye soderzhaniya pozitivnykh obyazatel'stv gosudarstva po bor'be s domashnim nasiliyem v praktike Komiteta po likvidatsii vsekh form diskriminatsii v otnoshenii zhenshchin [Development of the content of the positive obligations of the State to combat domestic violence in the practice of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women]. Mezhdunarodnoe pravosudie, vol.9, no.1, pp.67–80. (In Russian).

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