International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
Basilica News Agency – 26/11/2019
This world day to stop violence against women and girls is marked annually on November 25.
This year, the United Nations is sharing many ways in which the violence and suffering manifest itself in physical, sexual and psychological forms, and the life-altering, adverse consequences women face.
Beginning today, and for the next two years, the United Nations Chief’s UNiTe to End Violence against Women campaign will focus on the issue of rape as a specific form of harm and will encourage people to join the Orange the World initiative. The United Nations Chief’s UNiTe to End Violence against Women campaign was launched by former UN Chief Ban Ki-moon is a multi-year effort aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls around the world.
UN Women’s Executive Director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, expressed her concerns when it comes to rape specifically. She said the end of the horrendous act would mean eliminating a “significant weapon of war from the arsenal of conflict”.
“Rape isn’t an isolated brief act. It damages flesh and reverberates in memory. It can have life-changing, unchosen results – a pregnancy or a transmitted disease,” she stressed, adding that consequences of a one-time act can sprawl into damaging long-term effects.
According to UN reports, quoted by YourStory, a third of all women and girls experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, half of the women killed worldwide were killed by their partners or family, and violence perpetrated against women is as common a cause of death and incapacity for those of reproductive age, as cancer, and a greater cause of ill health than road accidents and malaria combined.
These are rather grim figures. Based on regions, the data becomes even grimmer.
Photo courtesy of Your Story
