Violence against women is still a major public health and human rights problem throughout the world. One out of three women in the world, and one out of four in Europe are exposed to violence. Every year, about 5,000 women are murdered by family members in the name of honour each year worldwide. Trafficking of women and girls for forced labor and sex is widespread and often affects the most vulnerable. Forced marriages and child marriages violate the human rights of women and girls, yet they are widely practiced in many countries in Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, up to one in five women and one in 10 men report experiencing sexual abuse as children. Women are deliberately targeted as victims in war and in times of peace their own homes are turned into living hell. Violence against women in any form questions the universality of human rights. The violence against migrant women, who in addition suffer the obstacle of the European borders, is extremely high. Gender specific violence has direct, structural and symbolic effects.
We have to react: Both in times of peace and times of war patriarchal societies oppress women with unbearable violence. The victims of today’s wars are 70-80 % civilians, most of them women. They are raped, tortured and humiliated in prisons and refugee camps, but also outside them. We have to make the struggle against violence on women also and in particular a matter of peace!
Violence is frequently invisible since it can happen not only publicly but as well as behind closed doors. Violence is a weapon for subordinating women. Violence against women is a matter of power. It is to be handled as a matter of equality and as a matter of emancipation. As long as the present system of domination is maintained and juridical and social inequality continues, both countries and individual men will feel legitimated to pursue violence against women. That is the level where we have to start resp. to continue the activities against any act of violence - in particular in the EU and in All other European countries too.
The violence must stop. The silence should stop.
The European Left is a political and a cultural movement that wants to help to give voice to all these women. We not only want to abolish the economic relations of oppression but also all relations of oppression irrespective of whether they are based on ethnicity, religion or gender.
We want a different society based on humanism, human rights and respect also through, gender education programs for young men and women, including language and content.
The Party of the European Left requires secularism as a basic principle of all states. It is defending women’s right to self-determination, contraception and free abortion. We demand the outlawing and punishment of sexual mutilation and forced marriages.
The Party of the European Left and all its member parties are repeating: The EU and all  European countries have to improve laws to end gender violence of any kind. These laws must focus on prevention and detection, along with an adequate budget to help victims of gender violence. These laws must guarantee migrant women full rights without reference to their administrative status in Europe.
On 25th November, the International Day against Violence towards Women, the right to self-determination by common and coordinated actions should prevail. Sexist violence originated from machismo and patriarchal domination should be fought.
The Party of the European Left, as a movement of liberation by and for women and men, demand social security, equal medical treatment for men and women, equal wages, equal access to education and income , an independent livelihood for all human beings as well as parity in politics and in every field of social and economic life.