Mira Sorvino is helping Amnesty International launch a two-year campaign to end violence against women.

The actress said the campaign is intended to put pressure on governments around the world to create policies that would discourage violence against women.

"Even in the United States, violence against women is the No. 1 threat to women's safety in terms of their health," she said. "Women are more likely to be injured or killed by violence than by any other threat."

In many countries, Sorvino said, violence against women also can take the form of female infanticide or abortions of fetuses expected to be girls.

The campaign also aims to have rape classified as a war crime. Sorvino said that for decades rape has been used as a tactic of war.

The 36-year-old, who won a supporting-actress Oscar for Woody Allen's 1995 film Mighty Aphrodite, also has appeared in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and The Replacement Killers.