If you are afraid to show your face, how can you have a voice?

WHEN Mary Robinson was last in Ireland for a public engagement she made an impassioned appeal on behalf of the many struggling countries she visits.

She wasn’t looking for food aid or medicines or military intervention, however. She was pleading for a zero tolerance policy on violence against women.

Her comments caused a few furrowed brows. When people are being bombed, starved, oppressed, exploited or terrorised, surely anything else comes a long way down the priority list.