More than 100 women have been killed so far this year in Italy, with almost half of them killed by their partners or ex-partners, Italian police said.
Released on Friday to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the report lists the names and details of the deaths of 95 women killed from the start of the year to November 7.
They include 27-year-old Carol, who was killed by her ex-boyfriend, who hit her with a hammer and then threw her dismembered body off a cliff, 40-year-old Elisabetta who died after being ” stabbed several times” by her husband and 74-year-old Silvana, whose husband beat her to death with a stick.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Friday that her government was committed to fighting gender-based violence and the “terrible epidemic of femicide”.
“We owe a lot to the victims,” she said in a statement posted on her official Facebook page.
In Italy, 31.5 percent of women have suffered some form of physical or sexual violence and 5.4 percent have been victims of severe forms of sexual violence such as rape, according to the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT).
The Italian statistics come as the world witnessed a domestic abuse crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic. Job losses, government inaction, backlogs of court cases and many other factors contributed to what the United Nations has called the “shadow pandemic of violence against women and girls”.
According to a UN report, 45,000 women worldwide were killed by their partners or other family members last year. This means that more than five women or girls were killed every hour by someone in their family.