In its report titled ‘Prison, Extortion, and Threats: The Price of Women’s Participation in Public Space,’ the Intersection Association for Rights and Freedoms revealed that women involved in public affairs are increasingly facing pressure and threats of imprisonment.
At a press conference held on Wednesday to present the findings of this report, launched in 2020, report author and researcher Jenine Tlili denounced the lawsuits, defamation campaigns and acts of violence that have recently targeted journalists, lawyers, former members of parliament and male and female politicians.
The report relied on a set of direct interviews and telephone communications with victims of violations, gathering data from civil society organisations, political parties, information from media outlets, and social networks, including analyzing reports and research from rights-based and feminist associations and collecting testimonies from women who suffered assaults related to their work or activism in rights and political circle
s.
The report mainly recommends enacting Law No. 58 of 2017 to address violence against women and children and provide a special budget to ensure that the right to protection and access to justice is achieved in an equal manner for women and men, setting up mechanisms to combat impunity and ratifying the Istanbul Convention on Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence of 2011.
The report also recommends establishment of a body of units specialized in crimes of violence against women and
children to investigate cases of cyber violence and prosecute perpetrators before the courts to address the phenomenon of impunity for cybercrimes against women and enabling women’s access to justice by automatically providing legal aid to women victims of cyber-violence and undertaking the victims of this type of violence, which is no less
serious than other types of violence.
It further recommends returning to the application of the principle of horizontal and vertical parity in candidacy for
elected bodie
s with a commitment to parity in appointments to administrative and political positions and taking into account the principle of women’s competence in civil and political participation.
Besides, the association laid emphasis on the need to guarantee the right of individual and collective protest by peaceful assembly, demonstration, and strike without infringing on these freedoms and without security or judicial prosecution, while respect freedom of thought, expression, and publication, including freedom of the press and the right of citizens to access all information.
It also recommends abolishing all forms of labor discrimination against women in terms of assignments, wages,
and professional promotion, and end forms of vulnerable employment in agriculture, domestic work, and other sectors.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse