Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The first year-long phase of UNIFEM’S Say NO to Violence against Women campaign concluded today, when signatures collected worldwide were presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a high level UN event.
In December 1999, at their 54th Session, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring November 25th the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This was in recognition of the magnitude of the problem and the urgent need for serious commitment by the world community to make finding solutions a key priority.
The origins of November 25th go back to 1960, when the Mirabal sisters, activists from the Dominican Republic, were violently assassinated for their political activism. The sisters, known as the ‘Unforgettable Butterflies,’ became a symbol of the crisis of violence against women in Latin America. November 25th was the date chosen to commemorate their lives and promote global recognition of gender-based violence, and has been observed in Latin America since the 1980s.
With the UN’S growing understanding of the link between gender and violence, the gender-based nature of violence against women and its linkage to subordination, inequality between women and men, and discrimination, rape as an act of war, violence against women finally became a matter of Human Rights in 2006 with a published report classifying violence against women — whether it happens in the home or elsewhere — as a human rights violation the report argued that states are obliged by international human rights standards to hold perpetrators accountable. “This report acknowledged for the first time from the highest levels of the United Nations what human and women’s rights advocates had documented for decades: violence against women is a massive human rights violation that is both a cause and a consequence of deeply ingrained inequality between men and women”.
In the fall of 2007 The Security Council
stressing the importance of women in conflict prevention and resolution and in peacebuilding, and the need for their full and equal participation in peace processes at all levels. And concern about the low number of women appointed as Special Representatives or Special Envoys of the Secretary-General to peace missions.
and a fall 2008 Security Council meeting in which
Sarah Taylor, Coordinator, NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security drew attention to the fact that women were “dramatically” underrepresented in the United Nations’ 30 missions and should be appointed to more leadership positions.
Women remain underrepresented as functionaries of the United Nations.
With women continuing to be affected by the tool of rape as an act of war — most notably and viciously at this time in The Congo — it is evident we have a long way to go.
For More on Violence Against Women, Violence Women during conflict and information on how you can get involved:
Gender and
Armed Conflict (pdf)
Women, war, and international law: The historical treatment of gender-based war crimes
To Watch For: A book by Dr Nicola Henry on “mass rape” in contexts of war focusing particularly on processes of collective memory (or forgetting) of sexual violence that respectively acknowledge or omit women’s experience of sexual violence in war and conflict. Wartime rape Collective memory and the law: Interview with Dr Nicola Henry
Links
Stop Rape Now
UNIFEM
V-Day
Women War Peace
Women to Women International
Congo Crisis: More Help is Needed for Women and Girls in North Kivu as Sexual Violence Escalates
When Women are the Spoils of War
UNHCR ( where the search term violence against women will bring you to volumes of reports)
Volunteer UN
Books:
The European Women’s History Reader where you’ll find
Hsu-Ming Teo’s, The Continuum of sexual violence in occupied Germany, 1945-49.
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Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape
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Violence against women is not inevitable, and is never acceptable.
