The victim, Fabiana Luzzi, was 16 and her murderer, aged 17, was her boyfriend.

He stabbed her repeatedly during a quarrel after school. The girl lay bleeding in a field. He abandoned her there and went to buy a can of petrol. He, then, poured the petrol over her and lit a match. She was still alive. Showing no apparent remorse over the brutal murder, he told the police she had attacked him and, perhaps, also "betrayed" him. The girl had refused to have sex with him. Fabiana had been physically assaulted by him on an earlier occasion, but she had not reported her boyfriend to the police. On the same day as Fabiana's funeral, Italy ratified the Istanbul Convention on violence against women. On a visit to Corigliano, the new Equal Opportunity Minister, Josefa Idem, claimed this was a good starting point for concrete political actions to help the fight against gender-based violence. Rashida Manjoo, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, said: "Most manifestations of violence are under-reported in the context of a family-oriented and patriarchal society where domestic violence is not always perceived as a crime, there is economic dependency, and there are perceptions that the state response to such complaints will not be appropriate or helpful." During its latest session of the UN Human Rights Council, in June 2012, Rashida Manjoo had reported on femicide worldwide and gender violence in Italy as follows: These manifestations are culturally and socially embedded, and continue to be accepted, tolerated or justified with impunity as the norm. States responsibility to act with due diligence in the promotion and protection of womens rights, is largely lacking as regards the killing of women. Violence against women is alarmingly increasing. According to the Small Arms Survey Research Notes (February 2012), "The global extent of femicide is estimated appoximately 66,000 victims per year for the period 2004-09. " Why are so many women killed all over the globe each year? Who is responsible for all those murders? Diana Russell, a feminist writer and an activist, defines "femicide" as "the killing of female by males because they are female." ( Russell, 1976) In her own words, "However, the term femicide does not include the increasingly widespread custom of aborting female fetuses, particularly in India and China. The correct term for this sexist practice is female feticide." She argues that "From the burning of witches in the past, to the more recent widespread custom of female infanticide in many societies, to the killing of women for so-called honor, we realize that femicide has been going on a long time." According to UN (United Nations) and WHO (World Health Organization) official reports (2012): In Italy, a woman is killed every 48 hours at the hands of her husband, or boyfriend or ex-partner, of the man she loves or has loved. In Russia, a woman is killed every 40 minutes. In Guatemala, two women are murdered each day. In South Africa, a woman is killed every six hours by an intimate partner. In India, 22 women were killed each day in dowry-related murders in 2007. All over the world, 200 million girls are "missing". This list of crimes is endless because violence against women is a global cultural problem. It cuts across boundaries of social class, wealth, race and culture and is prominent in every society, in every country. Terms like femicide and "feminicide" (Lagarde, 2006) emphasize the patriarchal explanation and justification of those murders and the latter adds to the idea of male "impunity" and society's indifference. Violence against women starts before birth, with sex-selective abortion or female feticide. It, then, ranges from malnutrition to verbal threat, from psychological intimidation to stalking, from discrimination to sexual abuse, from war rape to sexual slavery, from incest to forced sterilization, from human trafficking to bride burning, from 'honour' killing to breast ironing. Most of these forms of violence are carried out in a domestic setting, in the home, by people in the victim's family, by the people the victim loves or has loved. The perpetrators are not just men, but also women, who act in the name of tradition and sometimes in a brutal, desperate and inconsiderate attempt to protect daughters and girls from more evil and future suffering. In Italy, there is an ongoing heated debate about feminicide in the media. A few journalists, like

Fabrizio Tonello, in Il Fatto Quotidiano, (11th May 2013) and Sabino Patruno on noiseFromAmerika (20th May 2013), and Davide De Luca,on ilpost (20th May 2013), maintain that the official data is incorrect and unreliable because it is not scientific or complete. They claim that in Italy fewer women are killed than in other European or world countries and that, according to statistics, more men than women are killed. They think that the emphasis on feminicide in the news is only sensationalism and they negate that the phenomenon exists. Admittedly, statistics and data are sometimes scanty, fragmentary and incomplete but the data collected by the different organizations monitoring the phenomenon is considerably and consistently congruous and, therefore, reliable. Negationists are only "fact-screwing", as Loredana Lipperini and Adriano Sofri, two of the most important Italian journalists, writers and intellectuals, refute on Lipperatura- a blog where you can find all the articles mentioned here and above- on 27th and 31st May 2013 respectively. They argue and prove that the facts are the same but their conclusions differ because the same data is misread and misinterpreted. It is a fact that in Italy fewer women are killed than in other countries, but this does not mean that the problem must be underestimated or that it does not exist at all. What is more, Sabino Patruno seems to justify the violence as a sort of 'honour' code, closely associated with "crimes of passion", which, he assumes, are not premaditated, but are the outcome of a fit of rage. He dismisses the task force suggested by the new minister, Josefa Idem, as a pointless and discriminatory measure, since all deaths, he argues, have the same dignity. Patruno labels Idem's initiative as "sheer and obscure propaganda". The World Health Organization (2012) concedes that laws, police and the criminal justice system have proved insufficient and ineffective in many cases, but they do acknowledge that the problem exists and "there is also a need to strengthen awareness of and response to the risks of 'honour' killings in countries where such killings may be committed, including within migrant communities." The costs of this violence are very high in terms of human lives, pain and suffering. Violence affects employment and productivity. All the services to help, treat and support the victims and their children and to bring the perpetrators to justice are very expensive.Training health stuff and police and enacting laws is not enough. Laws are not sufficiently or correctly enforced and violence, as we have seen and as we all know, either from personal experience or from our friends' or from our neighbours' experience, is often unreported and goes unpunished, because it is culturally accepted and justified. Women are often considered non-persons, without equal rights to independence or freedom and without dignity or social status. They are victims of male terror and even if they respect their men and comply with their wishes, they are often blamed for their own troubles and are accused of provocation, as a pretext and an excuse for male impunity. Much more can and must be done, especially in education, by raising awareness of these crimes, that violate human rights, and by teaching girls and boys self-esteem and respect for every person and much can be done in schools through literature, too, for instance, reading the story below, taken from Feminist Fables by Suniti Namjoshi, a feminist Indian writer. A Room of His Own The fifth time around things were different. He gave her instructions, he gave her the keys (including the little one) and rode off alone. Exactly four weeks later he reappeared. The house was dusted, the floors were polished and the door to the little room hadn't been opened. Bluebeard was stunned. 'But weren't you curious?' he asked his wife. 'No', she answered. 'But didn't you want to find out my innermost secrets?' 'Why?' said the woman. 'Well,' said Bluebeard, 'it's only natural. But didn't you want to know who I really am?' 'You are Bluebeard and my husband.' 'But the contents of the room. Didn't you want to see what is inside that room?' 'No,' said the creature, 'I think you're entitled to a room of your own.' This so incensed him that he killed her on the spot. At the trial he pleaded provocation. Very demanding social, cultural and domestic responsibilities and expectations subjugate women. If they are not up to the expectations, men seem to be inevitably driven to kill them in the name of moral or religious principles or of a 'jus corrigendi', that is husbands' lawful right to 'correct' their children's and their wives' behaviour. As I have already said before, the phenomenon is spiralling worldwide beyond control and will have very serious consequences on the younger or unborn generations, thus creating more imbalance and further violence.

'May you be the Mother of a Hundred Sons' is a Sanskrit phrase and India's greatest blessing upon a new bride. It reveals the preference for boys over girls, typical of patriarchal societies. It sounds like a threatening and ominous blessing to new brides' ears in many cultures. The Italian equivalent "Salute e figli maschi " translates into English as "Wish you good health and male children". Having a daughter, or being born a girl, is still a deadly disgrace in patriarchal societies. Sons carry the family name and work from a very young age, and their birth is a cause for celebration. Daughters are viewed as a social and economic calamity. They impose the burden of a dowry. Their birth is a cause for disappointment and shame, as we can witness in a short Youtube documentary film, whose link you will find at the bottom of this page, titled It's a girl: The three deadliest words in the world. The ratio between men and women is 163 boys for every 100 girls in China and 85.9 girls per 100 boys in India. As a result of gendercide, in many areas, men cannot find any more brides and they buy them in nearby states, thus encouraging child trafficking and child marriages, depriving those children of their childhood and causing more and more evil. Action must be taken immediately to stop all this violence. Its roots are social and cultural and, if we pretend not to see or hear, we are accomplishes, too, and we, too, are responsible for those crimes. Violence will be defeated only when everybody becomes an active citizen and takes on personal responsibility for their role and behaviour in society. Teaching children awareness, self-esteem, respect and empowerment will promote change and will give them a choice for their lives and for shaping the kind of world they would want to live in. As Ban Ki-moon, the current Secretary-General of the United Nations, has urged: "Break the silence. When you witness violence against women and girls, do not sit back. Act." Ni una ms! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISme5-9orR0 Namjoshi, S. (1993). Feminist fables. Australia, Spinifex Press. http://article.wn.com/view/2013/05/28/Italy_passes_European_treaty_that_tackles_violence_against_w/#/video http://wideplusnetwork.wordpress.com/news/un-special-rapporteur-on-feminicide-and-violenceagainst-women-in-italy/ http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-14.pdf http://www.dianarussell.com/origin_of_femicide.html http://loredanalipperini.blog.kataweb.it/ http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/77421/1/WHO_RHR_12.38_eng.pdf