The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign – 2014
This update focuses on the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence campaign and highlights a selection of key relevant resources featured in the BRIDGE global resources database.
The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is an international campaign that starts every year on 25 November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and ends on 10 December, Human Rights Day. The campaign aims to raise awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights issue at the local, national, regional and international level. Organisers encourage community activists, NGOs, businesses and governments to join a local campaign or lead their own focusing on:
- Increasing women's safety
- Highlighting the nature and prevalence of violence against women
- Raising awareness of violence against women as a human rights issue
- Showing solidarity among women around the world
- Promoting women's leadership
- Lobbying government
- Strengthening local work to tackle violence against women
This year’s theme is ”Let’s challenge militarism and end violence against women”. The campaign highlights three cross-cutting priority areas: 1) Violence Perpetrated by State Actors; 2) Proliferation of Small Arms in Cases of Intimate Partner Violence; and 3) Sexual Violence During and After Conflict.
In the lead up to, and during, this year’s campaign, participants highlighted the systemic nature of gender-based violence and militarism which encourages inequality and discrimination and prioritises weapons spending over funding for quality education and healthcare and safe public spaces. The culture of militarism builds on and protects systems of power by controlling dissent and using violence to settle economic, political and social disputes. Militarism draws on and perpetuates patriarchal models of political, economic, and social domination of people by a small number of elites and privileges violent masculinity as acceptable behaviour. The 16 Days Campaign focus on the intersections of gender-based violence and militarism is an effort to work toward a more equitable and peaceful world.
There is an official facebook page dedicated to this year’s campaign https://www.facebook.com/16DaysCampaign
The 16 days of activism campaign also aims to build momentum for next year’s 20th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, at which global leaders committed to ending violence against women in all its forms. To know more:
http://beijing20.unwomen.org/en
http://www.dawnnet.org/feminist-resources/advocacy/beijing-20
http://awid.org/eng/Library/FEMNET-Beijing-20
Here is a selection of key resources related to this topic and featured in the BRIDGE global resources database.
To find many others (including some French and Spanish resources) please visit the BRIDGE website at http://www.bridge.ids.ac.uk/go/global-resources and type ‘16days2014’ into the search field.
BRIDGE storify
In BRIDGE we created a Storify which ran across the 16 days, updated daily, featuring the work of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) teams, IDS partners, and others who are working towards ending gender-based violence. The Storify features news articles, videos, blogs and resources.
See https://storify.com/BRIDGE_IDS/16days-gbv-2014
Global initiatives
Many organisations have planned initiatives linked to the campaign including:
- Amnesty International published a blogs page http://livewire.amnesty.org/2014/11/25/celebrating-womens-rights-heroes/ and a collection of activists’ toolkits to support organisations in their work to fight gender based violence http://www.amnesty.org/en/womens-rights/16-days
- The Centre for Women’s Global Leadership invited organisations to share photos, videos and reports on activities organised during the campaign and published a series of activists’ writings on the intersections of gender-based violence and militarism http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/ and a Take Action Kit http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/2014-campaign/2014-take-action-kit
- GenderLinks dedicated a page to the campaign with initiatives and events in many African countries http://www.genderlinks.org.za/article/16-days-of-activism-newsletter-8-december-2014-2014-12-08