Criminalization of Violence against Women and Laws against Domestic Violence: A Comparative Study of the United States and South Asia (Pakistan and Bangladesh)

Abstract

A global movement for the criminalization of domestic violence has been spreading from the 1970s in the context of the International Women’s Movement, but more particularly in the context of the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). This chapter examines the nature and the progress of laws against domestic and intimate partner violence in the United States and South Asia with particular reference to Pakistan and Bangladesh. Some of these laws include the United States’ Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994; Pakistan’s the Protection of Women Act (Criminal Law Amendment) Act of 2006, the Acid Control and the Acid Crime Prevention Act of 2010 (amended in 2011), the Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act of 2010, and the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act of 2012; and Bangladesh’s Dowry Provision Act of 1980, the Suppression of Violence Against Women and Children Act of 2000, the Acid Control Act of 2002, and the Acid Crimes and Control Act of 2002. It was observed that all three countries, the United States, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, defined domestic violence in terms of the norms of international standard which is that domestic violence is not just physical and sexual in nature. Emotional, psychological, and economic abuses are also a part of domestic and intimate partner violence. The commonalities in legislations are also observed in the areas of protection orders, victim support, and the confidentiality of domestic and intimate partner case records. In terms of punishment, Bangladesh probably has one of the toughest laws of domestic violence in the world. The Bangladesh Law (the Suppression of Violence against Women and Children Act of 2000) imposed the death penalty for 12 different kinds of crimes related to violence against women.