Men who break the silence on femicides. And you?

An appeal by the Interfaith Observatory on violence against women

Foto di Paola Cavallari

Rome (NEV), April 2, 2021 – “Too many women are killed. And you, man reading, what are you doing?”. Thus began the appeal of the Interfaith Observatory on violence against women, promoted with the Italian grass-root Christian communities and the magazine Exodus. “In the last few days and in several Italian towns, some men broke their silence and took a public stand”, reads the appeal. 

From the “Noi uomini” association in Palermo, to that of Trento which involved, among others, the mayor Franco Ianeselli, the Province president Maurizio Fugatti and Don Cristiano Bettega of the Trento diocese (former director of the National Office for ecumenism and interreligious dialogue – UNEDI). From the flash mob of Biella with men in red shoes, to the gathering in Albenga, and others. There are more and more occasions in which men themselves highlight that violence against women is “a men problem” and it is time to become aware of this.

In the appeal the video project “I start with me. Against violence on women, starting from being men” is also mentioned. The video was launched last november by the Baptist Pastoral College of the Baptist Christian Union of Italy (UCEBI) with the aim of opening a discussion on this issue among men engaged in the pastoral ministry.

Much has been done, but much remains to be done, as for example, the training for law enforcement officers and for social and health services workerss the training of new generations and of the mass media operators, the construction of new cultural and identity models, both for women and for men.

“The list of victims, the scenario of brutality and atrocities of femicides, the constellation of harassment and moral violence is too broad and deep to be adequately thematized here. It is a continuum of massacres that is not grasped in all its destructive load ”, concludes the appeal.


 The Interfaith Observatory on violence against women was born in 2019 and includes women of different religious traditions (Protestant Christian – Lutheran, Methodist, Waldensian, Baptist, Adventist, Pentecostal -, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist).