YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 27, NOYAN TAPAN. According to the World Health Organization, at least one in three women is subjected to physical abuse in her lifetime. This was stated during the press conference in Yerevan on the occasion of the start of a 16-day campaign against gender violence. Artsvik Minasian, RA Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Issues, said that in our society too women are in the greater risk zone than men. Although the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Armenia prohibit sex discrimination, violence and stipulate equal rights for women and men, women are subjected to violence. There are gender violence-related problems requiring solution, with the absence of the appropriate state statistics, and the insufficient number of sociological and scinetific studies being the major of these problems. In the words of Jina Sargisova, co-ordinator of the 16-day campaign against gender violence, many of the women subjected to violence are reluctant to speak about what happened to them, as a result of which the statistical data is not full and reliable. The main purpose of the campaign is to underline the importance of speaking about such violence as a means of fighting it. The campaign started on November 25 - the UN International Day of Fighting Violence against Women - and will last until December 10 - International Human Rights Day. During the campaign, it is also envisaged to mark International Day of AIDS on December 1, International Day of Fight againt Human Trafficking on December 2, and Day of "Montreal Massacre" (when a man killed 14 engineering female students for "being feminists") on December 6. Today 38.6 million people have AIDS, 48% of them are women. 4 million people, mostly women, become victims of trafficking every year. During the press conference, the message of the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was read, according to which, the danger of women's being subjected to violence exists in every country and every culture, irrespective of people's incomes, class, race or nationality. The massage says that it is out of question to speak about civilized society when there is violence with respect to women.

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