Women around the world continue to suffer alarmingly high rates of violence, with one in three subjected to physical or sexual attack from an intimate partner or former partner, new statistics showed as Italy marked the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women Tuesday. Many of those victims were murdered: in Italy, some 179 femicides were recorded in 2013, the highest level ever reported in the country, according to a European Union agency.
Another seven per cent will experience sexual assault by someone other than their partner, according to research from the World Health Organization (WHO) and published in a series of new studies in the medical journal The Lancet.
Experts quoted in The Lancet article said that cases of violence against women must be identified at an earlier point than is currently the norm, and that more funds should be allocated to fighting the crime.
However, "to make a real difference in the lives of women and girls, we must work towards achieving gender equality and preventing violence before it even starts," said Charlotte Watts, founding director of the Gender Violence and Health Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Italy experienced a 14% rise in cases of femicide between 2012 and 2013, according to a report by the European Union agency EURES. For ten years, northern Italy saw the highest number of femicides. The trend began to change, however, in 2013 when an increased number of cases of violence against women were reported in the southern part of the country.
At the same time, the number of murders of women doubled in central Italy to 44 from 22, with 11 women killed in Rome alone.
Some 66% of the femicide victims in 2013 were killed by a spouse, partner or former partner.
Approximately one in three died last year from beatings, strangulation or suffocation, while 49 were shot to death, 45 were stabbed, and 21 were killed by other objects used as weapons. The EU report noted that in 2013, 51.9% of those murdered had complained to the authorities about the abuse they suffered prior to their deaths.
The international event also aimed to raise awareness about violence perpetrated against women in other parts of the world.
Between 100 million and 140 million girls and women worldwide have suffered female genital mutilation (FGM), with more than three million girls at risk of the practice every year in Africa alone, the WHO figures showed. To draw greater attention to the issue, several demonstrations and events were planned across Italy on Tuesday.
Rome's Piazza del Popolo was to be lit up in red, while the national domestic violence helpline Telefono Rosa organized a concert at the Auditorium Parco della Musica.
As well, a conference was held at the Senate with Speaker Pietro Grasso.
A number of theater productions dealing with the issue were staged, including a performance at Milan's Auditorium Ca'; as well 150 kg of 'anti-violence' clementines were to be handed out in the city's Piazza San Babila by women's trade union associations in memory of Fabiana Luzi, who was killed by her ex-boyfriend in a citrus grove. And in the northern city of Turin, officials pledged to name a park in honor of women killed in femicides.
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