‘Femicide is preventable if we get serious about it,’ women’s rights activist says

Society needs to dig deeper to tackle domestic abuse, a leading women’s rights activist said in the wake of the fourth murder this year of a woman.

Lara Dimitrijevic from the Woman’s Rights Foundation told MaltaToday that femicide was preventable, if everyone got serious about it.

The foundation will be holding a march on Saturday in Valletta to raise awareness on domestic abuse in Malta.

Billed as a ‘March against femicide’, the event is a response to the four murders that have taken place within the last three months.

Two women from Għargħur were stabbed to death in July at their home and a Dutch woman had her throat slit in Santa Venera towards the end of August. Most recently, Lourdes Agius, 33, was found dead at her Paola on Saturday.

Agius’s partner, Michael Emmanuel, 28, was charged with wilful homicide on Sunday.

The Women’s Rights Foundation has been engaged by the Agius family to represent the victim’s interests in the criminal proceedings against her killer.

READ ALSO: Murder victim’s family reaches out to NGO to cover funeral costs

Dimitrijevic said that while efforts have been made to address the issue of domestic abuse, the country has barely scratched the surface of the problem.

“We need to dig in deeper and everyone, especially people in the position of authority, need to get serious about it,” she said.

In 2018, a change in the law provided greater protection to domestic violence victims. This meant that police reports had to be processed in the same pattern within a coordinated system.

Under this new policy, the risk of cases falling between the cracks should be slimmer. It is the first strategy to be specifically targeted towards domestic violence.  

But according to Dimitrijevic, there needs to be certainty as to how the laws are filtered down once implemented.

“The laws on their own are not enough. We need systems that ensure that those laws are consistently and equally applied and enforced across the board,” she said.

Dimitrijevic stressed that one of the biggest hurdles was the way domestic violence was still viewed, due to the stigma that surrounds the topic.  

“We need to work on prevention of violence. We need to work harder to change the culture that allows it to happen,” she said.

The march on Saturday will start at 10am at City Gate in Valletta.