Determinants of violence
Defining violence:
Violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage or destroy.
The intentional use of physical force against someone to threat, abuse or injure is violence. The definition itself covers physical, non-physical and psychological forms of violence.
_World Health Organization,1996
Roots of violence:
No single factor can explain why one person and not another behaves in a violent manner. violent behavior may be influence by variety of factors.
To understand this, roots of violence are shown in figure.
Image: World Health Organization
Types:
Today world is facing violence in various forms and types. Shape and form of vio-lence vary from country to country and society to society as change in culture, level of income, education, awareness, and others. Different researchers and organ-ization have described different types of violence. Here we discussed different types of violence described by WHO and Newfoundland Labrador.
WHO divides violence into three broad categories:
· Self-directed violence
· Inter-personal violence
· Collective violence
Type of Violence that a person act upon himself or herself is self-directed violence. Examples of self-directed violence are suicide attempt, suicide thoughts, abuse himself and others.
While Inter-personal violence is inflicted by another individual or small group of individual.
Examples of inter personal violence are child abuse, women abuse, neglect and others.
If violence is experienced from a community or country, that is called collective violence.
Examples of collective violence are War, state violence etc.
World health organization further divides Each category to reflect more spe-cific types of Violence:
· Physical
· Psychological
· Sexual
· emotional
– World Health Organization
Newfoundland Labrador also indicates different types of violence as follows.
Violence in Pakistan:
Earlier we have discussed different types of violence. AS far as violence in Paki-stan is concerned, it is closely related with women. Once we heard about violence, the first thinking that came in our mind is about women. Even the most fundamen-tal challenge women faced in Pakistan is violence. Violence against women is a so-cial stigma which is deeply rooted in our society.
Violence against women may manifest itself in different ways, and more than often results in serious physical, psychological, social and emotional implications for the victim and those around her (Ali and Gavino, 2008).
The United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women 19931, defines it as:
“Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life.”
More precisely, violence on women is determined in terms of domestic violence and inter-personal violence. Both terms of violence are used in place of each other. Physical, non-physical or psychological violent behavior against women by current or former partner, spouse, inlaws or by family members indicate domestic vio-lence.
Types of inter personal violence:
Image: World Health Organization
As far as inter-personal violence is concerned in Pakistan, common types of vio-lence that women face are as follows:
· Physical violence
· Dowry death
· Acid attacks
· Honor killing
· Psychological abuse