To mark ‘International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women’ new signage will be permanently installed in the town of Los Montesinos. This will be visible at the three entrances to the town and appear next to the town name.
“Our goal is for Los Montesinos to be a municipality free of sexist violence,” said the local Councillor for Equality, Ana Belén Juárez. She added, we have joined our name to the legend ‘municipality free of sexist violence’ as a sign of the commitment that exists in this government to end in our term with an end to physical and psychological violence against women and also to target chauvinisms that lead to abusive behaviours.”
In addition to the signs at the entrances to the town, posters will be installed encouraging people to ‘Stop sexist violence’ incorporating the phone number 016, which is there to assist victims. Triangular symbols, denoting of danger with the phone number and the strap-line ‘Take courage’ and prohibited signs with the shape of a broken heart will also feature in the campaign. The campaign aims to show the town’s no tolerance approach to gender violence.
The UN has reported that since the outbreak of COVID-19, emerging data and reports from those on the front lines have shown that all types of violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence, has intensified.
The UN is calling for a global collective effort to stop it. As COVID-19 cases continue to strain health services, essential services, such as domestic violence shelters and helplines have reached capacity. More needs to be done to prioritise addressing violence against women.
The Councillor explained: “We have not wanted the pandemic to distract us from our commitment against sexist violence and even if it is an atypical year in which we have had to redirect the events that take place on the occasion of this international anti-gender violence day where we demonstrate tacitly our rejection of sexist violence, we cannot forget that women continue to die at the hands of their partners or ex-partners and that violence continues to be exercised against women for the mere fact of being female. Hence, we have decided that this year the slogan is ‘Give it courage’ and it is aimed at all citizens, in the first place at women who are experiencing this situation of violence in the first person so that they know that we are with them and they should not to allow it and also so that the people who witnesses a situation of abuse so they do not shut up and denounce what they see.”
The campaign will also see the distribution of masks in and around municipal establishments so that the slogan ‘Give it courage’ will appear widely in the town. The local government will also paper the Town Hall with the names of this year’s victims (women and their children) so they are not forgotten.