Cuban Lawyers Highlight Domestic Violence

When independent lawyers from Cuba delivered their first ever report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women last month, they accused the authorities of turning a blind eye to domestic violence. 

The legal aid group Cubalex presented its report to a July 8-9 meeting of the Geneva-based committee, set up to monitor how world states are performing with regard to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

The Cubalex report covered issues such as institutional violence, domestic assaults, human trafficking, prostitution, and sexual exploitation and abuse.

It said women were vulnerable to violence perpetrated by state , 

“Brutality perpetrated against dissident women by police officers and State Security – including female members of these agencies – is endorsed by the state,” the report said. “This exemplifies institutionalised violence as a means of repressing dissident women.”

Cubalex singled out the case of Sonia Garro Alfonso, a former leader of the Damas de Blanco protest group who has been imprisoned for more than a year without trial.

More generally, the lawyers argued that Cuban women lacked “adequate protections against violence”, for instance in the home.

When women go to the police to press charges for violence, their claims “are not accepted by officers who argue that it is one person’s word against another’s”, the report said, adding that the authorities operated according to the popular view that “no one should come between husband and wife”.

The National Union of Cuban Jurists, UNJC, speaking for the Cuban state at the UN meeting, insisted that the government had succeeding in eliminating or reducing many forms of violence against women since the 1959 revolution.

As well as domestic violence, “other forms of violence such as sexual harassment in the workplace, in academia or elsewhere, and forced prostitution are very limited,” the UNJC report said.

The Cubalex report also noted concerns about the position of sex workers.

“No adequate infrastructure exists to prevent human trafficking and prostitution, and in consequence, women and girls are not protected against these acts,” it said.

Another UN body, the Human Rights Council, has already raised the issue of prostitution with the Cuban government through the Universal Periodic Review, UPR, a mechanism that regularly assesses member states’ progress on human rights. The council asked Cuba to look into “the fundamental causes that lead women to prostitution” and take action to “discourage male demand for prostitutes”.

The government, meanwhile, denies that the sex industry is a problem, telling a previous UPR that “there is not a single woman in Cuba who is forced to prostitute herself to ensure an income and survival”.

Alexander Robles is a freelance journalist in Mexico.

This story was first published on IWPR’s website.