Non-state torture: breaking the silence

Working as feminists human rights activists and grass root supporters, the last 24 years have consumed our efforts to break the silence about torture committed against women and girls by private individuals or groups within the context of relationships in the domestic or private sphere.  Such torture, also known as non-state torture, is rarely socially and legally acknowledged as a specific human rights crime.  Because of this invisibilization of women and girls, the severity of their suffering and their voices have been invisibilized and silenced. 

We are very grateful to have been able to contribute the chapter “Seeking Equality—Justice and Women’s and Girls’ Human Right Not to Be Subjected to Non-State Torture,” to editor Jocelynne Scutt’s book, Women, Law and Culture Conformity, Contradiction and Conflict. In this chapter, which is available to be purchased individually, we shared not only our voices but the voices of women and their drawings to help ‘show and tell’ their stories of being a girl child who survived non-state torture.  Now, with this chapter, no longer are women so tortured being left behind in women’s global march for human rights equality.     

Read more and purchase individual chapters here:

Contact: Jeanne Sarson, MEd, BScN, RN and Linda MacDonald, MEd, BN, RN

Persons Against Non-State Torture (NST) | Web: www.nonstatetorture.org

General email contact: contact@nonstatetorture.org