The Queen Consort has condemned “a worldwide pandemic of violence towards girls” at a Buckingham Palace reception attended by 300 company.
Marking the annual United Nations 16 days of activism towards gender-based violence, Camilla hosted survivors and their households in addition to Ukraine’s first woman Olena Zelenska; Queen Rania of Jordan, the house secretary Suella Braverman; Carrie Johnson; former Spice Lady Mel B and the well being secretary Steve Barclay.
In a speech she mentioned over that interval of 16 days greater than 2,000 girls will probably be killed worldwide by a companion or member of the family, whereas in England and Wales alone, police will report the rapes of greater than 3,000 girls.
“We’re uniting in the present day to confront what has rightly been referred to as a worldwide pandemic of violence towards girls. Confronted with such challenges, it may be laborious to know what sensible steps we are able to take to even start to make a distinction,” Camilla mentioned.
Two of probably the most highly effective methods by which to assist have been “to recollect and to hear,” she mentioned. “We bear in mind these girls who’ve misplaced their lives by the hands of a stranger, or the one who ought to have liked them greatest. In so doing, we refuse to be desensitised by chilly information and figures and we resolve to maintain the names and the reminiscences of those girls alive.
“We bear in mind Brenda Blainey, Mariam Kamara, Lucy Powell, Samantha Drummonds, Yasmin Begum, Sally Turner, Hina Bashir, Jillu Nash and her 12-year-old daughter Louise, to call however a only a few of those that have been killed this 12 months alone. And we bear in mind – as a result of we can’t neglect – all the opposite girls and ladies who died in equally horrific circumstances.
“These girls, tragically, can now not converse for themselves. However we hearken to those that can,” she added, saying she had spoken to numerous survivors in her earlier function.