Democracy’s Promise Unfulfilled while Violence against Women in Politics Persists

In October 2018, the Office for the High Commissioner on Human Rights’ Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls presented a report to the UN General Assembly recognizing violence against women in politics (VAWP) as a human rights violation and calling upon all UN member states to take action. In less than a decade, this issue went from an unnamed and unnoticed fact-of-life to an internationally recognized threat to democracy and a violation of human rights.

Women’s March on Sixth Avenue, New York, 20 January 2018.Eric Parker