Strasbourg, 17 December 2024
Today at the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, there will be a debate on the situation of female politicians in EU candidate and neighbouring countries facing harassment and cyber violence.
Ahead of the debate, Member of the European Parliament Željana Zovko emphasised that female politicians are exposed to two forms of violence: political violence and gender-based violence. She added that this state of play is a major threat to democratic societies, highlighting that these forms of violence discourage women from entering the political arena and are therefore undermining freedom of expression. Ranging from sexist comments to online hate speech and harassment, violence against women should be taken seriously.
Zovko added that the fight against violence towards women must become a priority for EU candidate countries. Indeed, violence against women, and especially symbolic violence, is often considered a secondary issue but it should be on the contrary seen as a serious threat to basic human rights. Women tend to end up accepting this state of affairs for different reasons and especially because of the common thought that has existed for decades.
However, we must have to the courage to change status quo, together with candidate countries that would in the fight against violence towards female politicians show they are willing to guarantee all human rights, even the ones that are not the most visibly defended.
“As a female politician, I am facing everyday exposure of this kind of discouragement. A lot of women often tell me they admire my perseverance against regular attacks. My main answer to them is that we must never give up and let them dishearten us. My political fight is aiming at empowering and encouraging women to dare to express themselves in the political arena and to speak up. No one will change the current state of affairs regarding violence against women. For this reason, women, be they politicians or not, have to exploit their inside force to move towards empowerment”.
“Each time I am saying something about the rights of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina who are disenfranchised, I receive insults and threats by Internet warriors that are sent to silence me. One of them was recently arrested in Luxembourg but a lot of them continue harassing me with impunity. Their acts are a serious threat to my freedom of expression and should be addressed as such. Therefore I call on the European Commission to strengthen its fight against hate speech and cyber violence toward women. I also call for these threats to be reported to the police, as I am used to do. The Commission should implement the regulations that were established to protect freedom for women to thrive and speak up in democracy”.
“As part of the fight against violence toward women, I also call on Western Balkan countries to follow the example of Croatia which introduced femicide as a criminal offense”.
Let us remind that Zovko has always been strongly active in the fight against all forms of violence against women.