Framework launched to end ‘epidemic’ of violence against women and girls

A strategy to end the “epidemic” of violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland has been launched by First Minister Michelle O’Neill.

Ms O’Neill read out the names of a number of women who have died in recent incidents as she told the Stormont Assembly that society has to change.

Executive approval has been announced for the strategic framework and its first delivery plan.

Addressing MLAs, Ms O’Neill remembered a number of women who had died in recent months, including Rachelle Simpson, who died in Belfast on Friday.

She told the Assembly: “Five women dead in a matter of weeks. Five women, whose names we now know for the most tragic of reasons.

“There have been many others. In the last four years over 20 women have been killed here.”

She added: “The stories of all these women who were killed must make us all the more determined to act to tackle the scourge of violence, harm and abuse which seriously impacts the lives of too many women and girls right across our community.

“Today we bring forward a strategic framework and first delivery plan to help mobilise the whole of society and a whole of Government response.”

The First Minister said the framework had been through public consultation and set out a seven-year roadmap to bringing about change.

She said: “We want to ensure that women and girls feel safe and are safe everywhere, this means educating ourselves, our society, our young people in every aspect of their lives to ensure we are clear violence and abuse in relationships is never acceptable.

“Ultimately we want to change society so women and girls no longer live under that underlying threat and that very real risk of harm and abuse.”

Priorities will include prevention of violence and strengthening criminal justice responses.

The plan also ringfences £3 million over two years in a change fund to support community and voluntary organisations.

Campaigns to raise awareness will also be developed.

Ms O’Neill said: “There is no place in our society for violence against women and girls. It is an epidemic and we must stop it.”

Alliance Party MLA Connie Egan said the plan must be followed with “action, commitment and resources”.

She added: “For far too long, Northern Ireland has been the only place across these islands without a dedicated action plan to tackle the unacceptable levels of misogyny and abuse we see right across our society, and now is the time for change.

“The approval of the strategic framework has been both years in the making, and years too late.”