25th November marks the worldwide celebration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
This day also marks the beginning of a 16-day campaign, whose theme this year is ‘UNITE! Activism to End Violence Against Women and Girls’ This campaign, led by the UN Secretary-General and UN Women has been celebrated since 2008, in an attempt to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls (VAWG) around the world.
Tackling VAWG is necessary in order to fulfil the rights of women and girls, as is set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This will encourage all members of society to become activists, calling for a world which is free of VAWG. On this day, the colour orange will be used as a representation of a brighter future for women and girls, in which they do not have to worry about becoming victims of violence.
The #PreventGBV project, which works to prevent gender-based cyber violence among young people in conflict with the law who are in the juvenile justice system, celebrates this International Day and supports this campaign, and hopes to be able to contribute with its activities to the goals of both.
UN Women published a paper in October this year summarising the efforts being made to tackle online violence against women and girls (VAWG), which is highly relevant to the theme of this year´s campaign and to the issues tackled by the #PreventGBV project. This report highlights the prevalence of online VAWG, which increased greatly during the pandemic due to most aspects of women's lives moving online, including work and education. In addition, the report notes that 38% of women globally have personal experience of online violence, with most girls becoming victims between the ages of 14 and 16. Moreover, this publication reflects on the key idea that much online VAWG has the same causes as offline violence, reflecting deep-rooted gender inequality as well as harmful concepts of masculinity.
In order to raise awareness of the issues regarding both online and offline VAWG, we encourage you to support the ‘UNITE! Activism to End Violence Against Women and Girls’ campaign.