The Role of Human Rights Standards in Facilitating the Criminalisation of Psychological and Economic Abuse: Coercive and/or Justified?

Human rights standards have contributed to comprehensive understandings of domestic violence. A notable relatively recent development is the recommendation that the protection of the human rights of victims of domestic abuse requires the criminalisation of a wider range of abusive conduct.

In particular, the recent enactment of offences criminalising repeated psychological, emotional, and economic abuse within a domestic relationship (‘coercive control’) in Queensland and New South Wales was facilitated by reference to their role in protecting rights to life, security, work, privacy, and equality before the law, as well as the right to be protected from torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. However, the protection of these rights through the criminalisation of abusive conduct has been controversial. Many commentators object to this coercive approach, suggesting that human rights standards should be used as a ‘shield’ rather than a ‘sword’. This research evaluates this coercive use of human rights standards within the context of accepting that the criminal law is properly a ‘strategy of last resort’, that the rights protected by the new offences are important and are not effectively protected by existing laws, and the acceptance of the criminalisation of other forms of human rights abuse.