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00:00And joining me now from New York is Kalliopi Mingeori-Ru from UN Women,
00:04who is a specialist on violence against women. Thank you so much for your time.
00:08Let's start by talking about this UN report and its findings, such as the fact that for
00:13many female victims, home is still the most dangerous place to be by contrast with male
00:19homicides, which occur mainly outside of the home. That itself speaks so much about this
00:24global epidemic, that the perpetrator is more often than not a partner, ex-partner or a family
00:30member. Thank you for having UN Women in your show. Indeed, our femicide report together with
00:39UNODC reveals that 85,000 women and girls were killed in 2023. Think about it. These rates are
00:48alarming. And they exceed often the fatalities that people experience during a war, for example.
00:56As you said, 60% of these women, they have been killed at home, or by their intimate partner,
01:05or by a family member in a place where they're supposed to find safety. And they were killed
01:11by someone that they really trusted and loved. I think this is really alarming.
01:17It also says so much about internalised biases in the way men still view women, that their lives
01:26are at the mercy of men, with violence against women being rooted in control, dominance and
01:32structural inequality. It's true. Indeed, the root causes of such violence against women is much
01:42rooted into gender bias, the beliefs, the attitudes that both men and women hold about
01:50the gender roles of women and men at home, at society more broadly, and also the very strong
01:59gender-based discrimination in laws and policies around the world. We know, for example, that men
02:07who have been holding gender-inequitable beliefs around what the gender roles and
02:13gender stereotypes should be about, they are the ones who tend to be perpetrating violence against
02:20women and girls. So how do you flip the script and place the onus on men
02:28accepting responsibility and what is clearly a massive problem for society in general?
02:33First of all, we really have to address impunity. Violence against women and girls,
02:38including happening in their homes, has been normalised because impunity is so pervasive.
02:46It's very, very important that perpetrators are held to account. Just to give you another
02:52alarming rate, most of the women that have been abused, 40% of these women,
03:00they do not have access, they do not report to any social services, and less than 10% of these
03:08women report to the police. So impunity is really, really alarming, pervasive, that makes violence
03:16really be considered as a normalised part of our lives, but it is not.
03:21Education, however, is key in all of this. What needs to be put into place to educate men and boys?
03:30First of all, I have to say that not all men are violent. The majority of men are not violent,
03:37and they have a very important role to play as well as bystanders. Just checking the behaviour
03:44and the attitudes of their peers when they are in a group and they hear about sexist jokes, for example,
03:51or comments about women, I think we all need to address this kind of gender stereotypes and how
03:58women and girls are portrayed. Indeed, education needs to start early, especially when we know
04:06Indeed, education needs to start early, especially when we know that one in four girls,
04:14before they reach the age of 19 years old, they have experienced some kind of intimate partner
04:20violence. And we know also that men and boys, they start this kind of violence towards their partners
04:28quite early. So you can imagine addressing this kind of violence early, it's very important to
04:36have educational programmes where we discuss about respectful relationships between boys and girls,
04:44men and boys, and just teaching everyone how important it is to live a life free from
04:51discrimination and violence. Also, I have to say that we have evidence that very often
04:58women and men who have witnessed violence and intimate partner violence at home
05:07when they were children, they are more prone to perpetrate violence or to experience violence,
05:14especially intimate partner violence, when they are adults. And that gives us a lot of information
05:21on how can we really stop this kind of violence already happening in the household, because it
05:27becomes a generational issue. Finally, this report and its very grim statistics is being
05:36issued at a time where we're seeing a rise in authoritarian governments, a swing to the far
05:43right, who certainly are not placing an emphasis on women's rights, and if anything, are rolling back
05:50women's rights. So how do we keep the focus on addressing this issue with governments who are
05:58clearly not interested in doing anything on the issue in the first place?
06:04The gender backlash and the broader backlash against gender equality, women's rights,
06:11is really serious right now. And we have to say that the use of technology platforms,
06:17the monosphere, really reinforces the social norms that really tolerate violence against women
06:24and girls. What we have seen the last few decades, that the role that women's movements can play
06:32in order to advocate for laws, policies, to put pressure on governments and on international
06:38voices, has been very important. And we have seen, indeed, changing laws and policies and also
06:46making the private issues, such as domestic violence, becoming a public issue. So we have
06:53hope that women's rights movements, being at the heart of the problem and just raising awareness
07:01and advocacy, they can really turn the tide. Kalliopi Mingheri-Ru from UN Women,
07:07thank you so much for your time. Thank you.