Italy's prime minister has vowed to crack down on violence against women, as the government passed a package of measures designed to tackle the problem.
"We believe that in our country there was a need to give a very strong sign – not only a sign but … a radical change on this issue," said Enrico Letta.
The measures range from increased penalties for certain forms of domestic violence to the granting of permits to foreign victims on humanitarian grounds. Other reforms aim at making it easier for domestic violence to be reported and abusers to be removed from the home.
Reports of domestic abuse will no longer be able to be revoked by the complainant. The justice minister, Annamaria Cancellieri, said this was a particularly significant element of the bill "because in the past women often took back their denunciation in order to protect the children".
The bill also includes measures targeting online bullying. The speaker of the lower house of parliament, Laura Boldrini, highlighted the problem earlier this year when, weeks into the job, she read out some of the large volumes of sexually threatening and misogynistic emails she had received. One of them read: "You need to be lynched, bitch."
This year both of Italy's houses of parliament voted to ratify the Council of Europe's wide-ranging convention on violence against women. Last year the UN's special rapporteur on violence against women, Rashida Manjoo, said after a visit to Italy that there was an urgent need to tackle the problem.
"Most manifestations of violence are under-reported in the context of a family-oriented and patriarchal society where domestic violence is not always perceived as a crime, there is economic dependency, and there are perceptions that the state response to such complaints will not be appropriate or helpful," Manjoo said.
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