Australia calls violence against women a “national crisis”

He australian prime minister declared this Wednesday that the country is experiencing a “national crisis” by violence against women and announced a support plan for victims and the fight against pornography made with fake imagesafter protests in several cities.

In a meeting with regional governors, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a series of measures to combat “the extremist positions of toxic masculinity“and pornography”deep fake” made with fake images created with artificial intelligence.

In addition, he reported that he will increase financing to support the victims.

“We all have to take responsibility” to eradicate this type of violence, said Albanese, a 61-year-old Labor politician.

So far this year, 28 women have been murdered in the country, double the number in the same period last year.

This increase in deaths generated protests throughout the country and calls from female survivors of the gender violence and support services to call for stricter laws.

Albanese announced on Wednesday a project law to combat pornography made from fake images, which uses a person’s face and mixes it with nude photographs, and give more funding to the internet watchdog.

It also announced an allocation of 925.2 million Australian dollars (US$598 million) for the creation of support services for women fleeing violent situations.

“We have a lot to learn”

According to Australian government statistics, between 2022 and 2023 34 women died at the hands of their partners or ex-partners.

The figures of gender violence in Australia They are below the average of the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where Argentina, Turkey and the United States record the worst statistics, according to 2019 data.

For Kathleen Baird, expert in gender violence from the University of Technology Sydney, statistics in Australia in this matter they remain too high.

“One in four women experiences some type of violence in her life, it is too“, she told AFP and highlighted that indigenous women suffer much higher rates of attacks.