One in three women worldwide has been a victim of physical or sexual violence at least once in her life, while in Cyprus in the last 5 years more than 12.5 thousand incidents of domestic violence have been recorded.
These tragic statistics were presented on Friday at a joint press conference of the Cyprus Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Commissioner for Gender Equality on the occasion of the launch of a campaign entitled “Preventing and Combating Violence against Women” with the slogan “gender violence is hiding in front of us”.
The campaign will run in the mass media and social media from November 25th until December 10th.
Addressing the press conference, Minister of Justice, Marios Hartsiotis said that the campaign aims to inform and raise awareness in civil society on the extremely critical issue of gender-based violence.
The Minister pointed out that the figures both at the international level, as well as at the European and national level are really shocking. According to recent UN data, it is estimated that 736 million women, almost one in three women worldwide, has suffered physical or sexual violence at least once in her life.
In Cyprus, Hartsiotis said, in the last 5 years there have been recorded 22 femicides, 12,544 incidents of domestic violence, while every year hundreds of women are in immediate danger of being exposed to various forms of violence.
The Minister pointed out that even though gender-based violence is often difficult to recognise, in most of the times it irreparably damages the physical, mental and emotional health of the victims, significantly diminishing their quality of life.
On her part, Commissioner for Gender Equality, Josie Christodoulou, said that violence against women is an open wound for all societies. Referring to the assessment of gender-based violence in numbers, Christodoulou said that the situation is tragic.
Globally, one in three women faces violence because of their gender, she said and noted that in addition to the serious physical and psychological effects on the victims themselves and their health, the economic dimension of the phenomenon is also important.
Christodoulou said that violence has a cost, which results from covering the needs of care and protection of the victims from the day of reporting the incident until the adjudication of the case as well as from the loss of income due to their absence from work.
According to the European Institute for Gender Equality, violence against women costs in the EU 289 billion euro annually, while its global cost, according to the World Bank, is estimated at least 1.5 trillion dollars annually, she added.
Also read: Athens hosts “Orange Week” against gender-based violence
Source: CNA/TKE/EPH
