UN says most members lack domestic violence laws

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 (Reuters) More than half the 192 member states of the United Nations have no laws to punish men who are violent against women, according a UN report.

The report, issued by Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office yesterday, found violence against women and girls was a global phenomenon that affects at least one in three females in rich and poor countries alike.

It also said the United Nations itself had too many programs that overlapped and were uncoordinated and for years had no specific gender-oriented programs at all.

''The curtain has finally been drawn from violence against women,'' UN Assistant Secretary-General Rachel Mayanja told a news conference. ''It is a public issue, it is all our issue and therefore we have an obligation to act.'' The 139-page report said only 89 countries have some legislation on domestic violence, but that in many cases the implementation of those laws was weak.

''The study has laid out for us a number of actions that have to be taken to try and eliminate this scourge,'' Mayanja said, adding that the aim of the study was to spark action and not to ''gather dust on a shelf.'' Although the United Nations had sponsored conferences and issued documents on women's rights, the issue drew center stage at other UN summits. In 1993, the late US Rep. Bella Abzug made sure women's views were part of a conference on the environment in Rio de Janeiro.

Punishment for violence against women, especially in the home, needed to be tackled by countries to ensure UN standards are implemented at national and local levels, the study found.

Recommendations from the study, which was presented to the UN General Assembly, include the creation of a data base on all forms of violence against women to inform policy and strategy development and a call for more resources and funding to tackle the problem, nationally and globally.

But Mayanja said the greatest challenge would be attempting to change cultural values on violence against women.

''We have to work within the communities, we have to change the values gradually, but it has start in the community. It cannot be dictated from outside of the community,'' she said.

The report cited practices that subjugate women on the basis of tradition and religion, including female genital mutilation, child marriage, and ''honor killings'' to restore a family's reputation.

''The politicization of culture in the form of religious 'fundamentalisms'... had become a serious challenge to efforts to secure women's human rights,'' the report said.

REUTERS DH RAI0505