People around the world are commemorating the U. N.-designated International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
MADRID — Thousands of people took to the streets of countries around the globe on Sunday, a day set aside by the United Nations to raise awareness of violence against women, to protest gender violence.
It was the beginning of 16-day campaign urging individuals and organizations to fight the kind violence that will affect more than a third of women globally during their lives, according to the United Nations.
Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile and the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, said in a video on Twitter: “I support the millions of women around the world who have dared to speak out against violence and harassment.”
Using the hashtags #MeToo, #NiUnaMenos and #NousToutes, she urged women everywhere to keep telling their stories of violence and “to demand and accountability reparation.”
“All of us, women and men, must come together to end violence against women,” she added.
In Madrid, demonstrators seeking to pressure the new Socialist government in Spain to address gender violence held signs reading, “No is No” and “Not one less,” and chanted, “We’re not all here; the murdered ones are missing.”
After reaching Puerta del Sol, the central square of Madrid, they listened as the names of victims were read out. The government calculates that 45 women have been killed in Spain over the past year by their partner or former partner, but the organizers of the protest put the total at 89, including those killed by people outside their own personal circle.
The country has been roiled by recent court verdicts that women say play down the inherent violence in sexual assaults: On Friday, a court in Lleida, in northeastern Spain, cleared a man and his nephew of the more serious charge of sexual assault, the equivalent to rape in Spain, after attacking a woman they had met in a bar.
