Role Of Rape In Australia

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INTERNATIONAL LAWS:
International human rights have recognized that private domain cannot be exempted from the general norms of protection of rights of women which means that marital rape cannot be exempted from being labelled as an offence merely because it falls within the private domain of the marital rape. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had, in December 1993, published The United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against women also clearly states that marital rape shall be included in the ambit of violence against women and hence, laws shall be made to protect women from such violence. This was not fully recognised by all the UN member states and was ignored by many countries. In fact, only 17 countries …show more content…

Movement for criminalisation of marital rape started sometime in mid-1970s and by 1993 all the 50 states had criminalised marital rape. For example, California has two different offences, Article 261 for rape and Article 262 for spousal rape.
Abolition of exemption of marital rape in England and Wales occurred in 1991 by the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords and no different punishment is attached to marital rape, meaning thereby marital rape is treated no differently as rape merely because of spousal relationship.
The first Australian state that dealt with marital rape in Australia was South Australia by partial removal of exemption. However, marital rape was not treated equal to rape and no aggravated form of punishment is attached with marital rape. New South Wales was the first state that completely removed marital exemption and criminalised marital rape in …show more content…

food, clothing and shelter but also includes writing and expressing oneself in diverse forms and also recognises autonomy of an individual. Through various landmark judgments, Supreme Court has ruled that that rape is not merely an offence against the victim but the entire society as a whole and it is not merely and humiliation of woman. It is held that rape is clearly a violation of right to life and right to live with dignity . Marital exemption to rape violates the right of wife to live with dignity and any law which gives the husband autonomy to compel his wife to have a forced sexual intercourse which is without her consent as well as against her will violates the very essence of right to life under Article 21 and hence, be declared as

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