Denying women human rights — including the right to live free from violence — "is the most flagrant form of subjugation and one of the worst scandals of our time," Governor General Michaëlle Jean said Sunday.

The statistics on the numbers of female victims of violence are "intolerable," she told the International Conference Violence Against Women in Montreal.

Soldiers tortured and killed the husband of Rwandan mother Athanasie Mukarwego, and threatened to rape her to death.
Soldiers tortured and killed the husband of Rwandan mother Athanasie Mukarwego, and threatened to rape her to death.
(CBC)
UN figures show that one in three women in the world has been brutalized or forced to have sexual relations. Violence is the leading cause of death among women 16 to 44, conference organizers said in a media release.

Jean said she had worked with women victims of violence for many years, creating shelters for battered women in Quebec.

Pain and courage

Jean told the packed room in a downtown Montreal hotel she would never forget the pain and courage she saw in the women she helped.

"Their words lift me up in good times and in bad," she said.

Since becoming governor general, Jean said she has made fighting violence against women a priority.

Conference organizer Dominique Damant said Canadians hear most about domestic abuse, but human trafficking, forced marriage and rape are problems that are equally urgent.

Three-day conference

The conference, which will hear 200 presentations over three days, is dedicated to Athanasie Mukarwego, a Rwandan mother. Sixteen years ago, soldiers tortured and killed her husband, and said "they would rape me until I died."

That threat "made my blood run cold," Jean said. "These words demand that we break the silence."

The conference, which has drawn workers, policy makers and victims from 40 different countries, is intended to better understand violence against women and consider different responses.

It was organized by a group linked to the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Family Violence and Violence Against Women, set up after Marc Lepine murdered 14 young women in Montreal in 1989.

A few demonstrators from a group advocating for fathers' custody rights, Fathers For Justice, asked Jean for a hearing as she left the conference.

She was non-committal, the Canadian Press reported.