It really shouldn’t take a group of young females to have to head onto the streets to protest that they do not feel safe in and around Belfast.
But that’s what it’s come to — and at the start of next month, as the evenings get darker and the potential threat rises, they’ll be out on those very streets to make their point — that no-one should be left feeling vulnerable anywhere in the city centre.
While the Assembly has embarked on a new strategy to combat the ongoing dangers which have become all too apparent in recent months — the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG) strategy was launched last month — it will take years before the real effects of it can be felt.
It is full of good words and intentions. But the number of women being attacked in their homes, the rise in domestic and sexual abuse cases coming to light, and the number of women losing their lives, is continuing to rise.
But it’s also in and around Belfast city centre that women should feel no threat. That, sadly, is far from the case.
There can be strength in numbers. Now a student group has come together to highlight the dangers facing women and girls, and The Walkie Talkie Girlies Society will be making their case for greater protective measures by walking from Queen’s University to City Hall on November 6.
Students from Queens University take part in their regular organised walk through Belfast
They’re doing it because they don’t feel safe.
And that should be an embarrassment to our society.
We hear plenty about the demise of the city centre. The trouble being faced by the night-time economy. The lack of available public transport.
The derelict and run-down areas which do not have adequate lighting and are magnets for unsocial behaviour
And with every headline, is it any wonder the fears in the community are increasing?
The streets of our villages, towns and cities belong to all of us.
We all have the right to be able to walk along them safe in the knowledge we will not come to harm.
It would be a fitting gesture if those in City Hall were to support the group by lighting up the building pink.
That would go some way towards reassuring the group that the whole of society feels the same as they do.
Project Pink has an important and timely message.
And it’s one that needs to be heard.