1. Human rights and domestic violence in Costa Rica.

Human rights and domestic violence in Costa Rica



There is no universal accepted definition for domestic violence, but in a few words it is recognized as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, friends or cohabitation. In Costa Rica, this situation is more problematic in women and children than in men, who are victims of physical and psychological suffering and it is a form or example of the non respect of human rights.

The principal problem of this type of violence is that they are often in great danger in the places where they are supposed to be safer: within their families. In some cases, at home is where they face a regime of terror and violence, as revealed in many studies. For example, pilot Survey on Domestic Violence, held in February 2002 by the Center for Research on Women's Studies, found that 67% of Costa Ricans claim to have suffered some form of violence. 40% of those consulted referred assault; sexual assault 15% and 30% had both types of abuse. In the children UNICEF reported that each year about 6 million children and adolescents are victims of severe abuse in Latin America and the Caribbean, of them 80.000 die from domestic violence.

In recent years, scholars and advocates have criticized human rights law for it is failure to accord protection to women facing gender-based violence. Although physical abuse of women is pervasive, cutting across cultural, class, and economic lines, traditional concepts of human rights have developed within a public, male-dominated framework which does not recognize the experiences of women as women.

In summary, it is demonstrated that the human rights are denied and many lives are stolen from them by the present threat of violence by an intimate partner and by other family members, wherever this violence takes place and in whatever form. And for me the most important is to analyze how we can help to eradicate this problem and many roles that some people transmit generation to generation.