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There Istanbul Convention, is an international treaty against violence against women and domestic violence, approved by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 7 April 2011 and signed on 11 May 2011, in Istanbul, by 45 countries. The treaty proposes to prevent violence, promote the protection of victims and prosecute the guilty by law. But where are we today?
According to data released by the World Health Organization, during the health emergency, one in three women has suffered physical and sexual violence giving life to a pandemic, within the pandemic, which hits every corner of the world without mercy.
The pandemic within the pandemic
There is another virus, even more powerful and mean than we know, which has spread like wildfire during the months of intermittent lockdown and restrictions, and is that of violence against women women. It is silent, but no less worrying: UN Women, the United Nations body that fights for gender equality and the emancipation of women, has launched the Shadow pandemic campaign, which literally means shadow pandemic, to bring to light what is happening worldwide between lockdowns and restrictions.
Because something is happening. And that’s nothing good. According to the UN, during the toughest months of the health emergency, i worldwide cases of violence against women grew by 20%. As if another deadly virus is spreading, quieter, invisible to most people’s eyes, hidden within the walls of the house and from prying eyes.
Violence against women has risen quietly during the first lockdown. It happened in Italy, in the first months of a health emergency, as Laura Gaspari confirmed, coordinator of the On The Road Coop Anti-Violence Centers, in this article. It happens in the world, in every part of the world.
Thus, amid the economic uncertainty arising from the health emergency, the loss of jobs and the increase in tensions, far fewer women have been able to ask for help or organize escapes. And the violence has increased.
Violence against women in Italy
According to the UN, at least they are expected in 2021 15 million more cases of domestic violence. The national confirmations tragically confirm these data. In Italy, for example, Istat has confirmed that the calls to anti-violence number 1522 increased by 73% during the lockdown. To this number, however, we must add all those women who, on the other hand, have not even managed to get to dial the number on the phone.
Numerous efforts have been made by anti-violence centers to be available 24 hours a day, to provide tools that are less traceable to the torturers. Signal for help was also born, the gesture of the hand to send out a signal for help.
Despite everything, however, the certainty remains that the pandemic has turned into an amplifier of violence, making the house a victim trap. Protecting them from the Coronavirus, but mixing them with another virus. According to EURES data, in fact, in 2020 they were committed 92 femicides with an average of one woman killed every three days.
The situation in Africa
In the rest of the world, the situation is far from reassuring. During the restrictions and lockdowns imposed in Africa due to the health emergency there has been a tragic and conspicuous increase in cases of rape and violence against women and girls trapped in the house with their torturers.
Unlike our country, however, the intervention by associations and organizations has been hindered by the fact that the services they offer are not considered essential. With the restrictions put in place during the pandemic, therefore, the operators of the organizations were unable to intervene, and all those women remained at the mercy of their tragic fate.
Like what he suffered Tshegofatso Pule, the 28-year-old South African murdered in the most brutal way during the pandemic. The young woman’s body was found hanging from a tree. She was pregnant. She was killed by a man, paid by Pule’s boyfriend, to commit the murder.
Still in South Africa, a two-year-old girl was raped during hospitalization. She had Covid and, as predicted by the health system, she was isolated. It is there, his hell has begun.
During the lockdown in Kenya, more than 4,000 underage girls became pregnant. The mandatory curfew and the inability to find escape routes forced young East African women to stay in their homes with violent family members and neighbors.
India and the lockdown
The lockdowns and restrictions have caused a lot of suffering for everyone the women of South Asia: crimes against women have increased substantially. Despite the very strict laws regarding violence committed against women, what is missing is “the will to prosecute the guilty” as stated by the activist for women’s rights in India Soumitra Karmakar Chakraborty.
In 2017 alone, the police recorded an average of 92 rapes every 24 hours. And it is only those reported. The situation worsened during the lockdown. There are those who desperately rebel, shouting “India is not a country for women”.
Latin America amidst violence, disappearances and femicides
Latin America is perhaps one of the territories with the highest rate of sexual violence in the world. The numbers are capable of dwarfing any other state or territory mentioned up to this point. According to data reported by the United Nations, in Argentina, Mexico and Colombia, domestic violence against women increased dramatically during the health emergency with a percentage reaching the 50% compared to previous years. El Salvador even recorded a 70% increase.
An alarming, terrifying and frightening fact concerns the Peru. During last year’s lockdowns and restrictions almost 12,000 women have disappeared. They have never been found and, considering that during the restrictions it was impossible to get out of what, it is tragically obvious what their fate was.
Every type of disappearance, it is evident, is linked to gender-based violence. But these are not the only alarming data concerning Peru and the states of Latin America. In fact, twelve of them hold the infamous record of the highest rate of femicides in the world.
And the saddest thing about this gruesome scenario is that many of the cases of gender-based violence are not punished, much less investigated, because in some way they are still accepted at the cultural level by the patriarchal society that sees the women like subordinates to men from time immemorial.
Violence against women
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