Petition to make rape a public crime delivered to the Assembly of the Republic with more than 200 thousand signatures

A petition asking the Assembly of the Republic (AR) for measures to make rape a public crime and make the crime of femicide autonomous was delivered to parliament on Monday with over 200,000 signatures.

Entitled “Petition against violence against women”, the initiative, launched last year, was signed by 209,510 people, well above the minimum of 7,500 signatures to guarantee discussion in plenary.

Among the first subscribers are activist Francisca de Magalhães Barros, Manuela Ramalho Eanes, Dulce Rocha, former president of the Child Support Institute, Rui Pereira, former Minister of Internal Administration, lawyer António Garcia Pereira, lawyer Isabel Aguiar Branco and judge Clara Sottomayor.

In a note sent to newsrooms, the group explains that the petition is the result of a “growing concern of citizens and organizations about the persistence and severity of a phenomenon that continues to affect many thousands of women every year”.

“The formal delivery of the petition represents an important moment of democratic participation and aims to draw the attention of institutions and the entire community to the need to approve and apply structural measures that guarantee security, freedom, justice and dignity to all women”they add.

In the text, the subscribers highlight the urgency of changing the Penal Code, in order to transform rape into a public crime and apply more serious penalties to the crime of domestic violence.

They also defend the autonomy of the crime of femicide, pointing out “the frequency and dangerousness of this type of homicide, which has an even more serious impact on the education and development of children”.

Two weeks ago, parliament discussed a PAN bill that called for the autonomization of the crime of femicide in the Penal Code, rejected by the majority of the Assembly of the Republic.

According to data from the Domestic Violence Portal, released a week ago, 25 people died last year as victims of domestic violence, of which 21 were women, making 2025 the year with the most homicides in this context since 2022.