WUNRN
ITALY, AMIDST ALARMING FEMICIDE,
PASSES EUROPEAN TREATY THAT TACKLES VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Chamber of deputies ratifies
Lizzy
Davies in
The treaty was
ratified on same day as the funeral of Fabiana Luzzi, a teenage girl allegedly
killed by her boyfriend. Photograph: Francesco Arena/EPA
Italy's
lower house of parliament has ratified a landmark treaty aimed at combating
violence against women.
The new government vowed to
prioritise the issue as thousands gathered in a southern town for the funeral
of a 16-year-old girl allegedly killed by her boyfriend.
At the end of an impassioned parliamentary debate
in
The vote was given an additional
sense of urgency by events unfolding in the Calabrian town of
Fabiana, a dance-mad schoolgirl,
was allegedly stabbed repeatedly last week by her 17-year-old boyfriend. She is
thought to have been still alive when he allegedly returned later to douse her
in petrol and set her alight.
On a visit to Corigliano, the new
equal opportunities minister, Josefa Idem, said the ratification of the
so-called
"Faced with Fabiana's death,
I reaffirm the commitment of all the government and my ministry to make the
fight against gender-based violence a key point of this legislature," she
said, according to the Ansa news agency.
"I feel the need to ask
forgiveness from her and from all women killed by the hand of those who abuse
the word love. The state must be more effective in its commitment [and] be even
closer to the victims."
There are no official statistics,
partly because the definition remains disputed, but according to the women's
organisation Casa delle Donne , 51 gender based murders of women have been
documented in
Last week, as well as Fabiana's
killing, a 35-year-old Romanian woman, Angelica Timis, was allegedly stabbed to
death by her former partner in a small northern town near Milan. In
After a visit to the
country last year, the UN's special rapporteur on violence against women said
there was an urgent need to tackle the problem.
Rashida Manjoo said: "Most manifestations of violence are under-reported in the context of a family-oriented and patriarchal society where domestic violence is not always perceived as a crime, there is economic dependency, and there are perceptions that the state response to such complaints will not be appropriate or helpful."
Before
Angela Romanin, of Casa delle
Donne, said the vote was an important step forward for
Signed by more than 25 countries but so far
ratified only by
Britain, although not among the initial
signatories in 2011, followed suit last year, with David Cameron describing it
as a "landmark agreement between countries that together we're going to
drag this problem into broad daylight and tackle it head on".