The killing of women and girls has reached alarming levels around the world requiring concerted efforts among all countries to end impunity for this extreme form of violence against women, according to the authors of the second edition of Femicide: A Global Issue that Demands Action, a resource book compiled by the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS). The resource book highlights the importance of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention), which entered into force on August 1, 2014. It also discusses recent initiatives in Latin America intended to combat femicide and the successful adoption in 2013 of UN General Assembly Resolution 68/191 "Taking action against gender related killing of women and girls."
The resource book contains the 2013 proceedings of the second annual ACUNS symposium in Vienna called, Forced Marriage, Violence against Migrant Women and the Istanbul Convention, as well as recent UN instruments and reports on violence against women and femicide. It covers a multitude of global gender violence issues that contribute to femicide, including child and forced marriage, violence against women in armed conflict, women’s access to justice, and domestic violence.
Compiled from: The importance of the Istanbul Convention is highlighted in the second volume of Femicide: A Global Issue that Demands Action, published by the Academic Council on the United Nations System, Council of Europe (June 16, 2014).