The demonstrators called for the activation of an emergency plan to combat various forms of violence against women, pointing to the limited results of Law No. 58 of 2007, due to its weak implementation in courts and security authorities.
In a statement, women’s organizations said “the killing of women is only an inevitable consequence of the state’s failure to protect its citizens and its complicity in repeated episodes of violence, especially more than most of the female victims had, before their death, sought protection from the competent authorities.”
According to observers, despite the development of legislation to empower and protect women in Tunisia, weak implementation on the ground has led to an increase in the level of violence against women in recent years , and the recurrence of its maximum form, represented in Murders.
dark picture
The figures reveal that there were many casualties in Tunisia during the month of Ramadan, when three wives were killed by their husbands in separate governorates of the country, whether they were stabbed with a sharp object or asphyxiated.
The death toll for the murders of women on April 15 has reached 9 since the start of this year, according to the association Women’s Voices.
Earlier reports from civil society organizations indicated that the year 2022 was marked by 15 cases of murder of women.
Sarah bin Saeed, head of the Association of Women’s Voices, said in statements to ‘Sky News Arabia’ that the murders of women have become a scourge affecting society, prompting activists to take action today and to express their anger towards all that women face.
The women’s rights activist said that killing women may seem like simple murder, but it hides behind it a series of violence against women that ends in murder.
The figures announced concerning these crimes remain incomplete, for lack of official statistics and the sufficiency of the efforts of the civil authorities to count the victims and decide on their cases, all the more so since the requests for protection of many battered women have not been examined by the courts, and some of them have lost their lives while waiting for the intervention of the State to protect and apply the law against the aggressors.
Activist Sarah bin Saeed confirms her determination to continue the fight for the cause of women’s vulnerability to enforce the law and protect them from violence, which increases during economic and social crises.
For her part, the head of the Women and Citizenship Association of the Governorate of El Kef, Karima Brini, confirmed that since the murder of the victim, Rebekah Sharni in 2021, with the weapon of her police husband, they have been working at the within the association to improve the protection of women, in particular victims of domestic violence.
Al-Birini said the recent decision by the Ministry of Women and Family to announce an in-depth study to find out the causes and circumstances of the murders of women is considered the most serious in years.
The feminist activist stressed that their work on the ground is important, but cannot compensate for the state apparatus in understanding the imbalances that have occurred within society and have led to the murder of women, d especially since the majority of murdered women reported their exposure to the authorities. to violence and asked for protection before being killed.
symbolic funeral
Activists held symbolic funerals for the victims of the murders of women outside the government headquarters and the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice in the capital, to alert official authorities to their responsibilities in combating violence against women. women and to demand an end to impunity and the strict application of the law.
Feminist and human rights organizations have called on the state to develop a national plan to combat domestic violence and prevent the murder of women, to implement Law No. 58 of 2017 on the elimination of violence against women and to follow up on its implementation and amend it to include a reference to the condemnation of the murder of women.
It should be noted that the Ministry of Women and the Family had previously denounced the frequency of murders of women by their husbands, at a rate that exceeds approximately one murder per month (15 crimes in 2022).
The need to change mindsets
Sociology professor, Najat Al-Arari, commented in statements to the site that the absence of statistical data on the murder of women is the absence of these crimes by the state, warning against the exacerbation of crimes in conjunction with the Corona pandemic, the home quarantine procedures and the difficult economic and social conditions in the country.
The sociology professor considered that the normalization with violence is one of the main factors for the occurrence of murders of women, in addition to the factor of traditional education in Tunisian social circles, which privileges the family to the detriment of the individual, and obliges women to sacrifice themselves for the good of the family and children and to accept violence.
Al-Arari says the murders of women do not happen for the first time, but rather after a series of violence in which the partner persists in using moral, psychological and material violence.
And she called for educating society about the seriousness of crime from the state and civil society to change mindsets so that it rejects violence that destroys families, so that women lose their lives by death, husbands in prison and children by homelessness.
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