all 54 member governments to make domestic and sexual violence prevention a top priority,” the Commonwealth Secretariat noted, adding that the organisation, together with the NO MORE Foundation, is set to provide each country’s leadership with a new toolkit to assist them in their efforts to meet Sustainable Development Goal 5, which calls for gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.
Speaking ahead of the event, the Commonwealth Secretary-General described the issue of domestic and sexual violence as a “universal phenomenon of epidemic proportions”.
“If anything else was affecting one in three people, the world would have been brought to a complete standstill and would have mobilised all actors and resources to put an end to it,” she pointed out. “Yet, we see this violence being largely regulated to the side-lines of the public safety agenda. To that, we say NO MORE, NO MORE negligence, NO MORE complacency.”
Accordingly, Scotland called on the international community to “join the chorus” by playing their part in preventing violence from happening and also providing necessary support to those who have been victimised by such cruel acts. “A world without violence is possible, but it involves all of us taking action just as we are doing in tackling the COVID-19 crisis,” she noted.
