Sisters For Change has launched a series of reports on behalf of the Equality & Justice Alliance. This report commissioned by Sisters For Change and authored by Marion Bethel analyses the criminalisation of marital rape and intimate partner sexual violence across the Commonwealth. Marital rape and intimate partner sexual violence constitute acts of gender-based violence prohibited under international human rights law. The report explores the colonial origins of the marital rape exemption before examining in detail the development of international and regional human rights standards relating to marital rape and gender-based violence. Almost half of all Commonwealth countries require legislative reform to remove the marital rape exception in order to establish a statutory definition of rape that complies with international and regional standards.
Through a series of country case studies, the report analyses inadequate legislative protections in relation to marital rape and the challenge that religious and customary laws in plural systems pose to legislative reform before discussing three different legislative models which have been adopted by Commonwealth countries to criminalise marital rape and intimate partner sexual violence. The 12 Commonwealth countries selected for review are Malaysia, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, South Africa, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago and The Bahamas. The purpose of this report is to advance and support the legislative reform of discriminatory laws in those Commonwealth countries where the marital rape exemption still exists in one form or another.
