A leading women’s rights charity has called for the establishment of a domestic abuse commissioner in Northern Ireland to tackle one of the highest rates of femicide in Europe.
There is heightened concern that policies tackling domestic violence in Northern Ireland have been held back by decades of sectarian division sucking political resources.
In Northern Ireland since 2020, 24 women have been violently killed, all but one by a man, with 41 confirmed femicides since 2017 – the third highest rate in Europe and the highest in the UK and the island of Ireland per capita.
Among them were Mary Ward, a 22-year-old mother of one, who was found dead in her south Belfast home last month. She was the fourth woman to be allegedly murdered in six weeks, according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Campaigners have blamed the “stop-start” government in Northern Ireland, with the Stormont assembly suspended on at least eight occasions since it was formed in 1998 on the back of division between nationalists and unionists.
Sonya McMullen, the regional services manager of Women’s Aid Northern Ireland, said: “If you look at all the femicides in Ireland, 40% of those have been murdered in the north. We have a population of just 1.9 million compared to 5.15 million in the republic. So that is staggering to us.”
The charity is now calling on the Northern Ireland assembly to take action and develop a strategy that brings the region in line the rest of the UK.
McMullen said the lack of legislative time on gender-based violence has meant Northern Ireland was last to bring in laws on domestic abuse, stalking and coercive control within relationships and laws on non-fatal strangulation.
She added that deep-seated conservatism in Northern Ireland had led to a failure to adequately recognise women and girls as a disproportionate vulnerable category, unlike the rest of the UK.
“In the North, everything was gender neutral. We had a first strategy to tackle violence in the home about 14 years ago but it was gender neutral. Nothing has been allowed to be specialised like it has in other parts of the country like England and Wales. Nothing was looked at through the gender lens,” she said.
“The whole structure here is not very good and it all goes back to the bloody troubles, of green versus orange. Unfortunately, it has held us back. We still don’t even have domestic abuse protection orders and emergency provisions that the rest of the country have.
“It is time for real action and strong leadership.”
She acknowledged that the first minister, Michelle O’Neil, and the deputy first minister were “genuinely committed” to a new strategy but said women cannot wait for the time it will take for fully funded, joined-up systems to be put in place.
“That’s why we call for a domestic abuse commissioner where there is oversight like they have in England and Wales,” McMullen said.
She added: “There are women who are afraid to go home even though when you shut your front door you should be in the safest place in the world. We are seeing women in refuges who were there as children. There is inter-generational abuse going on here. Will it take another murder to get action? Is that what it takes?”
Sorcha Eastwood, an MP for the Alliance party, has urged Labour to “start the conversation” about the “throwaway misogyny” on social media that she believes is fuelling a reversal of respect for women in real life among some boys and young men.
Eastwood, the MP for Lagan Valley, believes the effect of social media on young boys and men is significant.
“It really, really concerns me. We see it every day, even in schools where boys are coming in and saying really disturbing and inappropriate things to teachers, where girls are afraid to speak up,” she said.
“This is being normalised online. Clearly we now have a society where you have this sort of throwaway misogyny at one end that people seem to think they can get away with scot-free, to the top of the pyramid women losing their lives. It’s all interlinked.
“I think we felt at one point, maybe 15 years ago, that things were improving in terms of attitudes and protections for women, but just in law. Now it feels that things have completely and utterly troughed again.
“I think it is to do with attitudes, influencer culture, and the hate online and people like Andrew Tate whose clickbait model gives him a platform.”
She said there needed to be a conversation led by the Westminster government about how to tackle violence against women and girls online“This kind of stuff is emboldening young men and it is dangerous and destructive,”she added.
