The Global Pandemic and Domestic Violence

Isabella Da Re assesses the human rights implications of the UK government’s response to a surge in the reporting of domestic violence during “lockdown”.

With the global pandemic raging globally, some of the hidden victims of this phenomenon are those trapped at home with their abusers; namely, the victims of domestic violence, whose lives are characterised by the infringement of their basic human rights.

So, what is domestic violence? The Istanbul Convention was drafted to specifically tackle the issue of domestic violence in Europe and defines it as ‘acts of physical, sexual, psychological or economic violence that occur within the family or domestic unit or between former or current spouses or partners, whether or not the perpetrator shares or has shared the same residence with the victim’.[1] Mirroring this, the Domestic Violence Bill 2020 proposes a statutory definition of domestic violence in UK law, which is twofold; it addresses the meaning of abuse along with the relationship between victim and perpetrator.[2] The notion of coercive control is at the heart of the domestic violence definitions. Evan Stark explains that this is a behavioural pattern which seeks to limit the victim’s liberties, freedoms and self, thus going beyond the bodily harm by violating their human rights.[3]