Today, November 25th marks the International Day for Violence Against Women. The United Nations defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”
Issuing a statement, The UN says that deep-rooted inequality in the roles, rights and opportunities of men and women, and attitudes and social norms that condone or normalise such violence, have made the problem tenacious, but not inevitable.
It also notes that with laws to protect women and punish perpetrators, services to rebuild women’s lives and comprehensive prevention that starts early, ending violence against women and girls can become a reality.
The United Nations calls for robust funding for efforts to end this violence remains woefully insufficient.
No matter how hard we try to protect abused women by passing laws, it is still the single most common cause of injury to women. Millions of women around the world suffer violence on a daily basis.
The National Committee for Women in Sri Lanka stated that over 1,700 complaints citing violence against women have been lodged thus far this year (2016). Executive Director of the Committee Anula Indrani said, the complaints on violence against women had been lodged with the Women and Children’s Bureau.
The committee says that a number of programmes have been implemented to mitigate this situation.
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