November 25 marks International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and other human rights experts have called on countries to end the global epidemic of femicide, or gender-related killings of women, and gender-based violence against women.
United Nations data show that 80 per cent of victims of all intentional killings involving intimate partners (in which there is an established intimate relationship between perpetrator and victim) are women. UN member states, NGOs and academic institutions have also provided data on femicide, following a call for contributions issued by the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women.
While the #MeToo and #NiUnaMenos movements have broken the silence and demonstrated that violence against women, girls and adolescents is happening throughout our communities, they have not always been followed by adequate reforms of laws and policies, nor have they produced much needed results and changes in women’s daily lives.
Gender-based violence, including new forms of gender-based violence and online violence against women, remain widely unpunished across the world. The UN is urging countries to comply with their international and regional obligations in terms of their due diligence to investigate, identify those responsible and hold them accountable.
“We call for strengthened cooperation between independent global and regional mechanisms, as common synergies and efforts to address violence against women under the existing normative framework on human rights, and reiterate calls to end the global epidemic of gender-based killings or femicides (#NiUnaMenos) and to support the voices of those speaking up against endemic violence against women (#MeToo),” it said in a statement.
