PRESS RELEASE

Politics of relationships and relationships in politics: women's politics at the centre.

It is with this spirit that the National Network of Anti-Violence Centers has decided to accept the invitation of the president of the Femicide Commission Hon. Semenzato, to testify to the need for profound, continuous and transversal work in combating the phenomenon of male violence against women

“It is important to know the phenomenon” – declares Antonella Veltri, president D.i.Re – Donne in Rete contro la violenza. “We have been studying it for over 30 years, we live it alongside women, we hear it from their stories, from the stories of violence they experience. And the role of the Femicide Commission is important in deepening, studying, exploring and verifying the many aspects that concern the phenomenon. “

Among the 21.000 women welcomed by the over 100 anti-violence centers of the D Network.i.Re – which represent a third of Italian anti-violence centers, only 27% decided to report.

“The percentage of women who do not report is still too high – declares President Veltri. “We wonder why?"

President Veltri continues: “The anti-violence centers are not guaranteed the continuity of adequate funding to be able to plan the essential activities to accompany women, nor are they guaranteed the possibility of planning prevention and training actions for the network subjects involved in the phenomenon”.

According to the D Network.i.Re, the Femicide Commission has an important role, which can also be effective by pursuing these objectives:

  • Studying the justice system, continuing the precious work of the previous commission, a work that has confirmed what the anti-violence centers and the lawyers of the centers have been repeating for years: in the courts - especially civil ones - violence is not recognised, the women who suffer it are silenced and domestic violence is hidden. The Istanbul Convention is not mentioned and does not apply. Women suffer very serious forms of secondary victimization.
  • Monitor the Cartabia reform on civil justice, because the problem is never the rules that declaim and outline perfect mechanisms, the problem is always their application. So let's go and see if the Cartabia reform has allowed a change of pace (the lawyers of Rete D.i.Kings don't see it), analyze the capillarity, continuity and quality of the training of everyone in the justice system
  • Analyze cases of femicide, starting from those in which women had reported, showing confidence in the State's ability to provide protection tools that have not arrived. Let's see what was missing, when the system was not up to the trust of women who rely on it first and foremost out of need. Try to understand the reason for such a low conviction rate for crimes of male violence against women that it is reported as worrying by the GREVIO experts.
  • Listening to women: the stories and cases of women trapped in judicial processes in which they find themselves accused of parental alienation, crushed by counseling that portrays them as histrionic or oppositional without the violence suffered being taken into consideration or given any recognition
  • Collect the testimonies of too many women who, having emerged from domestic violence, do not have the means to support themselves, their daughters and their sons and find themselves going back on their path to freedom, listening to them in order to be able to design new tools that allow economic autonomy .

"We are in Venice to affirm that there are no winning policies on the issue of male violence against women if the anti-violence centers that were born from feminism and that continue to operate within feminism are not placed at the center of cultural change because female freedom cannot be ignored , from the value of self-determination, of equality of rights in the diversity of genders"- concludes Veltri.