by Sabrina Cocuzza
Today, all the world celebrates the International Women’s Day, reminding the many achievements that women have sucessfully accomplished since 1995, when the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which represents the historic roadmap for women rights was signed by 189 governments. Year by year, women's rights have been increasingly protected, but there is still much to do for accelerating this progress with a greater mobilization of the International Community. "When we unleash the power of women, we can secure the future for all," says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in his message for International Women’s Day 2015. Although this statement, we are still compelled to recognize the gap that hold back any pushes to gender-equality. I think of girls used as weapons by violent extremists, subject to female genital mutilation, child marriage, exploitation and discriminatory social norms. Some of this facts are no far from the EU and western countries where too many girls and women of every racial, ethnic, gender, age and socioeconomic group are still targets of domestic abuses, sexual assault, stalking, discrimination. Furthermore, in times of recession and greater unemployment, the violence is known to increase, especially when community shelters and government assistance programs have fewer resources.
