Country Profile Italy

General Country Information

Summary

There is one national women’s helpline in Italy, operating 24/7 and free of charge, that offers multilingual support. There are 464 women-only shelters in the country, which, according to the latest data available, offer approximately 3,200 beds, and there are 404 women’s centres. The women’s centres that are part of the network D.i.Re. provide specialist and competent support for survivors of sexualised violence too, while medical and forensic services are provided in hospitals in the major cities. Primary prevention is included in the National Strategic Plan 2021–2023 (extended to 2025), but no data is collected about such activities, and no budget is allocated. The state collects data on services supporting survivors of violence, without differentiating between women’s specialist services and general services. This data is public.

Women’s Specialist Services

There is one national women’s helpline in Italy, called National Helpline Against Violence and Stalking (Numero Nazionale Anti Violenza e Stalking, tel.: +39 1522). The helpline is free of charge and available 24/7, and offers multilingual support in Italian, English, French, Spanish, Arabic, German, Albanian, Persian, Algerian, Syrian, Syro-Lebanese, Moroccan, Egyptian, Berber, and Chinese. The helpline does therefore meet the standards of the Istanbul Convention for the provision of a national women’s helpline. It supports survivors of all forms of violence against women, with the most reported forms of violence being physical, psychological and economic violence. In 2024, the helpline was run by the NGO Differenza Donna, but in June 2025, this role passed to the organisation Centro Veneto Progetti Donna. The helpline is funded by the state, and in 2024, it received 65,064 valid calls and 10,050 chat contacts from 76,732 callers.

There are other regional and specialised helplines in Italy. For instance, the anti-trafficking helpline (tel.: +39 800290290) is free of charge and active 24/7, providing support to survivors of trafficking and exploitation with information and referrals to the local social welfare services. It is available in several languages, including Italian, English, Albanian, Russian, French, Spanish, Romanian, Hungarian, Arabic, Chinese, Polish, and Portuguese.

There are 464 women-only shelters in Italy, which, according to the latest statistics available from 2023, offer approximately 3,200 beds. Most shelters provide 24/7 access, and women are not expected to pay for their accommodation. Nevertheless, shelter services are paid for by social services, and if a woman is not eligible to receive support from social services (e.g. migrant women), she might not be able to be accommodated. On average, women can stay in the shelter between three and six months. Due to the lack of adequate housing and social policies, the length of their stay is often extended, especially in disadvantaged regions. The types of in-house services most often provided by women-only shelters are casework, counselling/psychological support, referrals/collaboration with other services, and practical and legal advice.

In terms of accessibility, all women-only shelters can accommodate refugee women, homeless women and older women; most shelters can accommodate women with older sons; some shelters can be accessed by and are accessible to women with uncertain residence permits and undocumented women, women with physical and with sensory disabilities, transgender women, women with children with disabilities and unaccompanied girls under the age of 18. There are also shelters specialised in supporting women survivors of trafficking, forced marriage and honour-based violence.

The main sources of funding are the state, donations, international and religious institutions, and they are run by different actors: women’s NGOs with a gender-specific and feminist approach, other NGOs, faith-based organisations and municipalities. Shelters are located in most regions, although many areas, particularly rural ones, lack adequate coverage. If women-only shelters had to decline referrals, the main reasons were the lack of space and capacity to support the survivor, the survivor being ineligible for support, or the shelters not being adequately equipped for the needs of the women and children. The most common forms of violence reported by survivors in 2024 were domestic violence (including physical, sexualised, psychological, economic violence and violence directly/indirectly affecting children), stalking and technology-facilitated violence against women. In 2023, 3,574 women were accommodated in shelters, of which 3,054 were accommodated in women-only shelters.

There are also other shelters in Italy providing support to survivors of violence, but no data is available on their numbers and availability.

There are 404 women’s centres in Italy, and 118 of these are run by the Women’s Network against Violence D.i.Re. (Donne in Rete contro la Violenza). Women’s centres provide counselling and psychological support, legal and housing advice, financial and social welfare support, employment referrals and collaboration with other services, representation at court, police, social services, and residential support services. Additionally, women’s centres that are run by women’s NGOs also provide specialist support for survivors of sexualised violence, including needs assessment, specialist psychological care, community awareness and education for prevention, and legal advice.
All women’s centres can be accessed by women with uncertain residence permits, undocumented women, refugee women, and older women. Most women’s centres can be accessed by and are accessible to women with physical, cognitive and sensory disabilities, while some centres can be accessed by transgender women and unaccompanied girls under the age of 18. Additionally, in Italy there are centres specialised in supporting survivors (at risk) of forced marriage, honour-based violence, female genital mutilation, trafficking in persons, and centres specialised in supporting women with uncertain residence permits, undocumented and refugee women, black and minority ethnic women, women with physical, cognitive, sensory disabilities, older women, girls under the age of 18 and transgender women.

There are no rape crisis centres or sexual violence referral centres in Italy. There are crisis/medical services for survivors of sexualised violence, since according to the Italian criminal law on sexual violence, public health institutions are obliged to collect and preserve forensic evidence of violence, independently from the circumstances and the decision of the survivor to file a complaint. Despite all emergency services in major hospitals being equipped to fulfil this obligation, there is no guarantee that the staff are trained and specialised to ensure proper medical and psychological care and trauma-sensitive support. Only some public hospitals in major cities apply an effective referral system and comply with the risk assessment standards. In other cases, survivors are referred to the local women’s centres that are run by women’s NGOs and provide specialist and competent support for cases of sexualised violence. Women’s centres can accompany women during medical procedures and judicial proceedings, offer needs assessment, specialist advocacy services and community awareness and education for prevention. Specialist forensic and medical care is provided in medical services. In Italy, medical services for survivors of sexualised violence are funded by national/local authorities, are available only in major cities and are unevenly spread across the country. They support all survivors of sexualised violence, including women, minors, and other population groups.

There is no specialised helpline for cases of sexualised violence, and the national women’s helpline provides support for these cases too.

There is no centralised national database dedicated exclusively to primary prevention activities. The National Strategic Plan 2021–2023 (extended to 2025) mentions primary prevention and provides a definition, but does not include a dedicated strategy for primary prevention of violence against women and girls. Additionally, while national plans incorporate some primary prevention measures, they primarily focus on awareness-raising activities. Only a few local authorities have their programmes specifically dedicated to primary prevention, which often focus on awareness-raising or are limited to short-term actions. There is no specific budget allocated to primary prevention activities, and no systematic national evaluation. Various activities are conducted in the country, mostly by feminist organisations or within the scope of individual projects, and often without funding from public institutions. These include feminist self-defence trainings, empowerment activities for girls and women, primary prevention activities specifically targeted to men and boys, school-based primary prevention programmes, trainings for primary prevention practitioners, bystander intervention trainings, self-care activities and awareness-raising campaigns or programmes. At the time of writing, the Ministry of Education is proposing a bill on prior informed consent of families for school activities related to sexuality. Moreover, the Ministry aims to exclude all children under the age of ten from primary prevention programmes on sexual-affective education, limiting the activities of feminist and LGBTQI+ organisations.

1. Data from the Country Report 2023, as the 2024 national statistics were not published at the time of writing. ↩︎