16 days

'tis the season. A grimmer and longer Festival of Light; you can curse the darkness while lighting these candles. 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence

November 25 - December 10, 2007

Demanding Implentation, Challenging Obstacles: End Violence Against Women

Since 1991, the 16 Days Campaign has helped to raise awareness about gender violence and has highlighted its effects on women globally. Each year, thousands of activists from all over the world utilize the campaign to further their work to end violence against women. The campaign has celebrated victories gained by women’s rights movements, it has challenged policies and practices that allow women to be targeted for acts of violence, it has called for the protection of people who defend women’s human rights and it has demanded accountability from states, including a commitment to recognize and act upon all forms of violence against women as human rights abuses...

Challenges and obstacles have been identified by activists in all regions of the world, and we have chosen to highlight a few of those here. These can be addressed both as demands to be made on the state or other institutions and as actions that we must take in our own work in order to achieve better results. A few suggestions for focusing advocacy in this year’s campaign include:

· Demanding and securing adequate funding for work against VAW;
· Calling for greater accountability and political commitment from states to prevent and punish all forms of violence against women in practice, not just in words;
· Increasing awareness of the impact of violence against women, including engaging in measures to end it by men and boys;
· Evaluating the impact and effectiveness of work to prevent violence against women;
· Securing the space for advocacy and defending the defenders of women’s human rights in their work to end gender based violence.

Blogs/gers who have been participating in this include:

Ann Jones of the International Rescue Committee (photos may be triggering/disturbing)

Sokari and chinwe at Black Looks

bideshi blue

Black Amazon

Shakesville

Feminist Allies

A Closer Look

Ultra Violet

There's a roundup of diverse blog posts at openDemocracy.

Also see the blog Document the Silence for ongoing work on violence against WOC, and take a look at the recent week of Red Essays.

Because the "official" commemorative dates pass, but the violence continues, and so does the work.