Thank you Madam Chair,
Distinguished Colleagues,
Italy has long been dedicated in advancing women’s and girls’ access to justice through targeted actions. These include access to the legal professions – where women today in Italy represent more than half of our judiciary – an achievement that reflects meaningful progress but also calls for continued determination.
Yet true access to justice is measured not only by presence, but by possibility: by the conditions that enable every woman to pursue her professional path freely, fully, and without structural obstacles.
In this perspective, maternity must never be allowed to become a fault line in a woman’s path to empowerment. It must remain a free and supported choice – one that institutions protect and society sustains – so that no woman is ever compelled to choose between her professional aspirations and the desire to have a child.
Access to justice is also one of the most powerful instruments to prevent and combat violence against women in all its forms.
In recent years, the Italian Government has reinforced a comprehensive framework addressing domestic, economic, sexual, and digital violence. Victim-support mechanisms have been strengthened; reporting procedures streamlined; penalties for perpetrators increased; and mandatory specialized training expanded for health personnel and members of the judiciary. At the same time, measures promoting women’s economic independence have been introduced, in full recognition that financial autonomy is often the crucial step in breaking the cycle of violence.
I am therefore honored to announce that Italy has recently introduced femicide as a distinct offence into its Criminal Code, now establishing that:
“Whoever causes the death of a woman, when the act is committed as an act of hatred, discrimination, subjugation, or as an act of control, possession, or domination because she is a woman, or in relation to the woman’s refusal to establish or maintain an emotional relationship, or as an act intended to limit her individual freedoms, shall be punished with life imprisonment”.
Dear Colleagues,
Our ultimate task is to build systems in which reporting is safe, proceedings are swift, rights are tangible, and women participate fully at every level of the legal profession. Indeed, when women can rely on justice, the very foundations of democracy are strengthened.
Thank you Madam Chair.
