Crime of femicide, the unanimous yes in the Senate: orphans will also benefit. The anti -violence centers: “more severe penalties will not save women”

The femicide bill was unanimously experienced in the Senate and now passes to the Chamber. It provides, among the various measures, that femicide becomes a crime in its own right compared to the murder. As he repeated for a long time Michela Murgia: «The word femicide It does not indicate the sex of the dead. Indicates the reason why it was killed. A woman killed during a robbery is not a femicide. Women killed are feminicides because they refused to behave according to the expectations that men have women. Saying murder tells us only someone is dead. Say femicide also tells us why». The text of the bill, which provides for life imprisonment for those who commit it, defines it as follows: «Anyone who causes the death of a woman, When the fact is committed as an act of discrimination or hatred towards the offended person as a woman or is a consequence of the refusal of the same to establish or maintain an emotional relationship or to undergo a condition of awe or in any case A limitation of his individual freedoms, imposed or claimed due to his condition as a woman, is punished with life imprisonment». If on the one hand this bill changes the step with respect to the timeliness of the criminal intervention, on the other it does not intervene in a structural way on the deep causes of femicide and does not provide for the concrete strengthening of cultural and social prevention paths.

The positive note is certainly that concerning the Improvements provided for the orphans of femicideboys and girls who in an instant lose all their certainty and the context of the family in which they were born and raised. In particular, as the international organization points out Save the Children, Access to the benefits provided for the orphans of femicide is expanded to all those who have been deprived of the mother because they are killed as a woman, even in the absence of an emotional, current or past bond, between the victim and the author of the crime, thus overcoming a limit so far provided for by law. To this is added the extension of the economic benefits also to the children of women who survived attempts at femicide, But it was seriously compromised to the point of no longer being able to take care of their children. In these cases, minors will be entitled to the same protections provided for femicide orphans.

«It is essential to continue looking at violence against women also from the point of view of daughters and children, affected directly by how much their mothers suffer and they often witness themselves », he explains Giorgia d’Errico, Director of institutional reports of Save the Children. «To these boys and girls, specific and continuous support must be guaranteed and easy access to all the benefits required by law, without bureaucratic obstacles and protecting their psychophysical well -being. We positively find that the approved proposals, the result of a synergistic work between majority and opposition, move in the direction we desired by us, as highlighted in our memory presented in the Commission. Among these we also positively evaluate theto possibilities for minors of violence from the 14 years of accessing the anti -violence centers To receive information and orientation, without the need for prior authorization from the parents “.

In the same hours when the femicide bill is approved in the Senate, D.the.Re – Women on the net against violence It presents the new report of the network of anti -violence centers and activities carried out on the national territory. In 2024 they were welcomed by the anti -violence centers of the network 23,851 women, In 2023 they had been 23,085 in 2023. “They are women who recognize respect for their experiences and the desire to fight for the affirmation of their freedom and for that of all women in each of us,” he comments Cristina Carelli, president of the – Women on the net against violence. “In the face of these results we would expect a more active involvement in the construction of the so -called anti -violence policies, whose gaps are evidently affected by the absence of our contribution”. The anti -violence centers were not in fact involved in the processing of the bill on femicide and multiple items have reiterated in recent months the need to predict specific training courses but also adequate economic investments Both for the structures that deal with the victims of gender violence (the centers mainly live in volunteering and still insufficient economic resources despite being recorded every year positive deviations) and to really give life to a path of cultural change in our entire country. As Antonella Veltri said several times to say. : «We do not expect a drop in feminicides, because, we said it and we reiterate it, It is not with severe or more severe penalties that women’s right is affirmed to live free from violence».