Violence against women has been described as a "cancer" eating away at the core of every society, in every country of the world.

This is according to Amnesty International's Northern Ireland Programme Director, Patrick Corrigan, who was speaking today at the launch of the organisation's new global campaign to stop violence against women.

"Violence against women is a human rights atrocity," Mr Corrigan said. "From the battlefield to the bedroom, women are at risk. Governments are failing to address the real 'terror' of our world that millions of women face every day."

Publishing a new report outlining the endemic scale and urgency of the problem, Amnesty International emphasised that at least one in three women in the world will suffer serious violence in their lifetime.

"The situation in Northern Ireland is particularly serious," Mr Corrigan pointed out. "We know that one in four women here will be the victim of domestic violence at some point in her life.

"PSNI statistics show since 1996 there have been 44 domestic murders and the police have attended 89,789 domestic incidents. Last year, there was a total of 31,887 calls to the Woman's Aid 24 hour helpline and local groups and 989 women and 1112 children stayed in Northern Ireland Women's Aid refuges."

Latest figures reveal that one in five women in the world will be the victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.

In the UK there were 14,000 recorded rapes in 2003 (8% up on 2002); only one in five rape attacks are reported to the police with 167 women raped every day.

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