Workers Solidarity Movement

The WSM took some time out from our future directions discussions session at Cloughjordan eco village over the week to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Belfast also saw a Take Back the Night march and the day was also marked by large marches in Europe, especially France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Greece. In France demonstrations took part in about 50 cities, with an estimated 30,000 in Paris up from 2000 last year and over a thousand in Lyon and Marseille. The march in Istanbul was hemmed in by very large cordons of riot police, the regime of Erdogan like many of the governments of Eastern Europe being very hostile to feminism. Madrid saw a demonstration of tens of thousands in the aftermath of the acquittals in the 'wolf pack' rape trial earlier this year.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime say an average of 137 women across the world are killed by a partner or family member every day with "the home the most likely place for a woman to be killed".

More than half of the 87,000 women killed in 2017 were reported as dying at the hands of those closest to them, approximately 30,000 of these women were killed by an intimate partner and another 20,000 by a relative.