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Emma Little-Pengelly and Michelle O\u2019Neill (centre) at the launch of a new plan to combat violence against women (Liam McBurney\/PA)<\/p>\nA Stormont strategy aimed at ending violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland is making a real difference, the region’s first and deputy first ministers have said.<\/p>\n
Michelle O\u2019Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly said the strategic framework was never going to deliver a short-term fix to what they described as a deep-rooted cultural issue in society.<\/p>\n
The Stormont leaders were attending the launch of the seven-year strategy\u2019s second delivery plan on Tuesday \u2013 an event that heard testimony from organisations involved in work on the ground, such as in schools and youth groups, to challenge misogynist attitudes and tackle gender-based violence, abuse and harm in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
The leaders were asked to assess the impact of the strategy two years on from its launch, amid public concern about the number of women who continue to die in violence circumstances in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Emma Little-Pengelly and Michelle O\u2019Neill (centre) at the launch of a new plan to combat violence against women (Liam McBurney\/PA)<\/p>\n
Thirty women have been killed since 2020 in the region, seven in the period since the strategy was launched in 2024.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill, who described violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland as a \u201cscourge\u201d and an \u201cepidemic\u201d, insisted the strategy was a priority for the Executive, with \u00a35 million spent to date and a plan to direct a further \u00a32 million during the second delivery phase, which runs until 2028.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think even today, when we reflect on testimony from some of the organisations that have been working in partnership with us, they have reflected to us time and time again about the difference the projects that they\u2019re involved in are making on the ground,\u201d said Northern Ireland’s First Minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been ourselves out on the ground, in with young people, in community centres, in sports halls. We can see that this is making a difference. But the reality here is I wish there was a switch that we could just flick and that we would solve this problem. That\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a cultural change to achieve in our society that\u2019s going to take time. It\u2019s going to take persistence. It\u2019s going to take determination. And it\u2019s going to take partnership. And I know that everybody in that room today who\u2019s helped us to launch this plan, who\u2019ve delivered on the work so far, are determined to do so, and we\u2019re determined to support them in that.\u201d<\/p>\n
While acknowledging uncertainty about the overall Stormont budget, O\u2019Neill insisted the \u00a32 million earmarked for the next stage of the strategy was a priority for the Executive Office.<\/p>\n
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Michelle O\u2019Neill said the strategy is a priority for the Executive (Liam McBurney\/PA)<\/p>\n
Little-Pengelly said the strategy was \u201cnever going to immediately end violence against women and girls\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said the plan was focused on the \u201ckey principle of prevention\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means starting early,\u201d said the deputy First Minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means getting in there in terms of schools and youth groups and trying to change, as we\u2019ve said, those attitudes and issues that give rise to those behaviours later in life.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s around supporting those organisations to work with women who are undergoing violence. Currently, it is about supporting those organisations working with families and communities that are having to live through the devastation of losing their loved one.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, the value in these strategies and actions will be what you don\u2019t see. It\u2019s those that do not get murdered. It\u2019s those that do not live with violence every day. And that is where we want to get to.<\/p>\n
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Emma Little-Pengelly said the plan is focused on prevention (Liam McBurney\/PA)<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, of course, that will require \u2013 and we said this right from the outset \u2013 it will require a long period of sustained investment. And, of course, it isn\u2019t just about that additional money \u2013 that additional money is there to support research, to support organisations within the community sector, to support some of those support services \u2013 but, of course, it\u2019s more than that. It\u2019s about mainstreaming these key principles and values within our education sector, within the health sector, within so many other additional parts of government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Little-Pengelly suggested the response to the conviction of a man last year for harassing her online demonstrated an attitude in society that needed to change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to say, some of our newspapers etc barely referenced it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, so when somebody who\u2019s a deputy First Minister, jointly leading this Executive, has somebody who\u2019s jailed for quite a period of time for a threat to kill, and yet there will be focus on other issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, that is an indication that people are still not taking these issues seriously. People do not understand the impact that that has on a woman, on a person, in terms of the fear that people feel about that. And these things have to be taken seriously. It\u2019s one example, I personally experienced it.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill said the strategy \u201cmeans everything\u201d to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a woman, I\u2019m a mummy, I\u2019m a granny, and what I want is that my daughter or my granddaughter grows up in a world where there\u2019s fairness, where they\u2019re safe, where they feel safe, where they don\u2019t have to mind themselves all the time just because of their gender,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo this goes to the heart of the kind of society that we want to live in and the kind of society that we want to build. And that\u2019s why this work is so important. I wish it was fast work. But the reality is, it\u2019s not, because you\u2019re changing decades of culture. You\u2019re changing what is really right at the heart of the culture of society.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Stormont strategy aimed at ending violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland is making a real…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-410428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}