Law
The modern concept of humanitarian intervention follows the same doctrinal and operational pattern either as the societas humana which interposes to restore the forfeited standards of humanity and to protect maltreated individuals or the need to restore peace and order threatened by human rights abuses. Because humanitarian intervention is prima facie an assault on state sovereignty, it is legitimised by being integrated into a natural law theory which envisages an enveloping human society. Related to the rationalisation and secularisation of natural law is the projection of the individual who is for Hugo Grotius the ultimate unit in national and international law. Grotius' social contract appears as an attempt for the philosophical rationalisation of the status quo, whereas for the contractual philosophers it is a means for scrutinising state power.
The anamnesis, which in medical terms mainly consists in case history, provides a legal analysis of around 70 decisions taken by domestic and regional human rights courts, and UN treaty bodies, relevant for the two dimensions at the core of the book, the horizontal, ‘interpersonal’ dimension and the vertical, ‘state policies’ dimension. The first dimension includes cases on domestic violence, rape in peacetime and female genital mutilation. The second dimension explores cases on abortion, involuntary sterilisation, maternal health and emergency contraception. The chapter examines the decisions following three axes/questions: Who are the applicants? In which ways was women’s health relevant in the decision? What reparations, if any, were granted? The book does not aim to elaborate a database of jurisprudence but to reflect on legal issues arising from selected decisions to elaborate the concept of violence against women’s health in chapter 2.
The prognosis is the final step in Hippocratic medicine. This chapter includes some final comments on the main findings of the analysis. First, it discusses what the book has achieved and encourages the reader to view the two dimensions as intersecting, and to transfer findings in the horizontal dimension to the vertical one and vice versa. In a second part, the chapter puts the main argument of the book to the test once more, asking whether, in the end, despite all the efforts, international law itself is not the ultimate cause of violence against women’s health. The conclusions answer the question whether the law can be both the cause of and the cure for the disease.
This chapter conceptualises the innovative idea of violence against women’s health (VAWH). Like the concept of violence against women, violence against women’s health is not an autonomous idea in criminal law, but an ‘umbrella’ definition grasping two dimensions of violence, each characterised by specific, gender-based crimes or practices. The chapter first ‘constructs’ VAWH as a form of discrimination against women, of gender-based violence, a violation of the rights to health and to reproductive health, and as a concept that does not require the element of intent for its definition. In particular, it stresses the existence and the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination (often intersectional discrimination) in the perpetration of VAWH. The chapter then distinguishes this idea from the traditional one of violence against women and enriches it to encompass limitation of women’s autonomy, construed using a human rights-based approach. In dealing with autonomy and consent, the chapter extends its reasoning to another practice, genital cosmetic surgery, which it compares to female genital mutilation.
The introduction provides the background of the research, the main argument and the methodology used throughout the book. It deconstructs the notion of violence against women as consolidated at the international level in order to grasp its main elements and explains why the choice of the rights to health and reproductive health is pivotal for the analysis. It then captures the relationship between violence against women on one hand, and the rights to health and reproductive health on the other, which constitutes the starting point of chapter 1. It argues that violation of the right to health is a consequence of violence, just as (state) health policies might be a cause of – or create the conditions for – violence against women. The chapter also illustrates the reason underlying the choice of the Hippocratic paradigm as backbone of the work and provides the structure of the following chapters.
This chapter aims to answer the question which obligations states must abide by with regard to VAWH? After analysing possible ways to pigeonhole states’ obligations, the chapter conducts legal analysis of obligations of result, due diligence obligations and obligations to progressively take steps. The strength of the chapter lies in the fact that both the horizontal and the vertical dimensions, as conceived in this book, can be unified while reconceptualising states’ obligations. Skirting temptation to argue that in the horizontal dimension positive obligations prevail, whereas negative obligations – plus some obligations of result – are present in the vertical dimension, the chapter provides examples of how, in all cases, states bear obligations of all three types that ‘specialise’ along the lines of the two dimensions explored. The starting point of the chapter is the law of state responsibility; it challenges the traditional categories of international law from a feminist law perspective.
The book explores the relationship between violence against women on one hand, and the rights to health and reproductive health on the other. It argues that violation of the right to health is a consequence of violence, and that (state) health policies might be a cause of – or create the conditions for – violence against women. It significantly contributes to feminist and international human rights legal scholarship by conceptualising a new ground-breaking idea, violence against women’s health (VAWH), using the Hippocratic paradigm as the backbone of the analysis. The two dimensions of violence at the core of the book – the horizontal, ‘interpersonal’ dimension and the vertical ‘state policies’ dimension – are investigated through around 70 decisions of domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies (the anamnesis). The concept of VAWH, drawn from the anamnesis, enriches the traditional concept of violence against women with a human rights-based approach to autonomy and a reflection on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination (diagnosis). VAWH as theorised in the book allows the reconceptualisation of states’ obligations in an innovative way, by identifying for both dimensions obligations of result, due diligence obligations, and obligations to progressively take steps (treatment). The book eventually asks whether it is not international law itself that is the ultimate cause of VAWH (prognosis).