WUNRN
European Women's Lobby - EWL
International Day Against
Violence Against Women
EUROPEAN WOMEN's LOBBY CALLS FOR STRONGER EU COMMITMENT TO COMBAT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
November 25th is the International
Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (declared by the UN in
1999) and starts the 16 days campaign against violence against women, which
terminates on the 10th of December (International Human Rights Day).
Through the world and the EU, many women’s NGOs are participating in this
campaign by organising awareness raising events and calling for better
implementation of legislation. Practices, which may be qualified as torture or
inhuman or degrading treatment and to which women are preponderantly exposed by
virtue of their sex, such as physical violence, rape, genital and sexual
mutilation, trafficking in women and girls are still common and have
dramatically increased in some areas, both in quantity and intensity. All forms of
violence against women (VAW), in the private and public sphere by State and
non-state actors should be addressed and understood as basic violation of human
rights principles.
Despite the efforts of the UN and the Council of Europe (CoE) to compel governments into implementing their commitments to eradicate VAW, the lack of a comprehensive legal instrument on VAW at EU level results in an ad hoc approach by member states, characterised by low prioritisation of the issue. Since 1993, the Council of Europe has made the combat against violence one of its priorities, adopting Recommendations and launching in 2006 a campaign with the involvement of national parliaments and agencies to combat violence against women, including domestic violence.
EWL started to work with legal experts
on the argumentation for/feasibility of a comprehensive European legal
instrument to eliminate violence against women. The preliminary conclusion is
that there is potentially a legal basis for demanding legislation on violence
against women at EU level On International Day on Violence against Women, EWL calls on the
EU to make a strong commitment to go forward, in order to press Member States
of the European Union to further their commitment to combat violence against
women, and to raise awareness in all EU countries about this issue. For more
information, contact the EWL Secretariat at: centre-violence@womenlobby.org
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