Foreign Affairs. January-February 2020

Women Under Attack

January/February 2020 137

Bolivia can increase enforcement by providing judicial and law en-

forcement training to the local authorities processing prosecutions.

As a start, authorities should better track violence against female

politicians. The hidden nature of the problem is exacerbated by un-

derreporting: many women remain silent so as not to feed the stereo-

type that they are ill equipped for politics. Another problem is the

lack of data that would allow analysts

to compare rates of violence suffered

by women to those suffered by men.

Governments, nonprofits, and aca-

demic institutions should fund re-

search that fills this gap. Additionally,

governments can look to civil society

organizations that have developed ways to measure violence against

women in politics. The National Democratic Institute, for example,

has created a risk-assessment tool that helps identify the personal,

professional, and political risks that women face; shape response

plans; and report incidents to the relevant governing entity.

Simonovic, the UN’s special rapporteur, has urged governments to

train observers and authorities to monitor and report attacks against

female voters and candidates and submit their findings to treaty-

monitoring bodies, such as the UN Human Rights Committee. States

should hold election administrators accountable if they fail to take

measures to prevent the harassment of female politicians. Countries

could also establish independent observational bodies responsible

for identifying and reporting violence against female members of

political parties.

Meanwhile, only a few parliaments have internal mechanisms for

handling harassment within their ranks. The 2016 Inter-Parliamentary

Union survey found that fewer than ten of the 42 parliaments investi-

gated had policies on sexual harassment against parliamentarians, and

fewer than half had policies designed to protect female staff. Even

where these mechanisms do exist, parliamentarians and their staff

often don’t realize it. Political parties also have a role to play, by adopting

codes of conduct, introducing zero-tolerance policies, monitoring so-

cial media accounts for abusive speech, and providing training to party

members. Governments can also combat harassment in parties by

ratifying the Convention Concerning the Elimination of Violence and

Harassment in the World of Work, which was adopted in Geneva in

Governments too rarely

enforce laws intended to

protect women.

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