How Domestic Violence Impacts Everyone — around the world and in Canada

Written by Roya Aboosaidi

Domestic violence proves to be one of the most multidimensional issues modern societies face today. With its importance being emphasized through fear, women and women-identifying people are disproportionately affected by this issue. Across 161 countries, a statistic for 2018 reported that 1 out of 3 women report having been personally affected by some degree of domestic abuse in their lifetime. That is a 30% chance that you or any woman you know will experience some sort of domestic violence. Most in the Western world will justify this by saying that they are at a less great risk for domestic abuse due to laws which have been implemented to protect their rights. However, in Canada, every six days, a woman was killed by an intimate partner in 2019. This is not meant to alarm nor further emphasize the fear instilled in women of all ages, rather to illustrate this issue’s significance.

Although the victims of domestic violence are predominantly women-identifying, it affects everyone regardless of their proximity to the receiving end of the violence. It reflects how far we have, as a collective society, to go in order to achieve a just society. A society in which laws fulfill their purpose of protecting its individual members instead of acting as superficial indications of a democracy. Protecting rights is equally as important to reversing the fear associated with the possibility of not being believed. The fundamental human reaction to a loved one enduring undeserved pain and suffering explains that although one may not directly experience domestic violence, its impact is severe enough to impact all that encounter its effects second hand. This prominence of this issue reflects the ways in which we must educate children with values that promote the importance of having a mutual respect for all humans regardless of their differences, in addition to reprimanding violence at a young age. Although it seems insignificant, the power one develops with age must be granted upon understanding the value of human lives, which do not fluctuate depending on their ability to defend themselves. In the absence of the aforementioned and thus the failure to tackle the root of the issue, this problem will persist without a noticeable impact by interventions. Internationally, many governments across the developing world have cut funding associated with protecting women's rights to fight the pandemic. With proactive initiatives that would have confronted this issue head-on, pandemic relief plans could have been implemented without compromising the protection of women against violence. For what are fundamental human rights, if they prove to be easily compromised when we need them most?