During the monthly EU Heads of Mission meeting hosted at our Belgian Pavilion in Dubai, a special moment was organized to show solidarity on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women #IDEVAW in the presence of UAE Minister for Food Security, Climate Change and the Environment.
The 25th of November marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and the start of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence.
Violence against women and girls has been described by the World Health Organization as a global public health pandemic, with 1 in 3 women around the world experiencing physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.
The United Nations tells us that:
around 120 million girls worldwide have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some point in their lives;
worldwide, more than 700 million women alive today were married as children, 250 million of whom were married before the age of 15. Girls who marry before the age of 18 are less likely to complete their education and more likely to experience domestic violence and complications in childbirth;
women and girls account for about 70 per cent of all human trafficking victims globally, and the costs and consequences of violence against women last for generations?
Women's activists have marked 25 November as a day against violence since 1981, the date in 1960 when the three Mirabal sisters, political activists in the Dominican Republic, were brutally assassinated on the orders of Dominican ruler Rafael Trujillo.
