Recognizing the Egregious in the Everyday: Domestic Violence as Torture

This article addresses the battering and sexual abuse of women by their partners. The author argues that such violence must be understood as torture, giving rise to obligatory international and national responsibilities. She notes two major obstacles to the recognition of intimate violence against women as a human rights violation: the public/private dichotomy in international law and the persistent trivialization of violence against women. The thesis of this article is that when stripped of privatization, sexism and sentimentality, private gender-based violence is no less grave than other forms of subordinating official violence that have been prohibited by treaty and customary law and recognized by the international community as jus cogens, or peremptory norms. [Descriptors: Violence Against Women, International]