In June 2013, a thirteen-year old Egyptian girl Sohair al-Bata’a, died while being circumcised by a doctor in a small village northeast of Cairo. Today it was announced that the “doctor” who performed the procedure was acquitted in Egypt’s first Female Genital Mutilation trial. But we must not forget. We must get up and stand up for our rights and those of girls like Sohair.

Girls such as Sohair are the reason that the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence Campaign exists. From 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to 10 December, Human Rights Day, the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence Campaign is a time to highlight action to end violence against women and girls around the world.

The campaigns key dates include: November 25th: The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women; December 1st: World Aids Day; December 3rd: International Day for Persons with Disabilities; December 10th: International Human Rights Day. This year, the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence Campaign will continue with the theme of “From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Let’s Challenge Militarism and End Violence Against Women!”

Violence against women continues to affect women in all corners of the globe. The United Nations (UN) defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”.

One in three women globally has been a victim of either sexual or physical violence by a partner, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement released alongside the reports, published recently in the Lancet medical journal.

According to the WHO “despite increased global attention to violence perpetrated against women and girls, and recent advances in knowledge about how to tackle these abuses, levels of violence against women — including intimate partner violence, rape, female genital mutilation, trafficking, and forced marriages — remain unacceptably high, with serious consequences for victims’ physical and mental health.”

In Africa, violence against women continues unabated. Families show their preference for boy children over girl children. Violence against the girl child starts right at birth, with some circumcised between infancy and age 15. These procedures are not performed by medical professionals; moreover, circumcision has no health benefits for girls and women. Circumcision may cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths. According to World Health Organisation, more than 125 million girls and women alive today have been cut in the 29 countries in Africa and Middle East where FGM is concentrated. Despite activists calling for the end of the practice, female genital mutilation is still a common practice in many communities.

Earlier this year, Uganda signed the Anti-Pornography Act into law; a number of women around Uganda were stripped for wearing mini skirts. Last week, a group of men were caught on video stripping a woman at a popular bus stop in Nairobi, Kenya. Fortunately, women and men from around East Africa took to social media, tweeting the hashtag #MyDressMyChoice and organized protests through the streets of Nairobi demanding the government deal with perpetrators of sexual violence.

We are violated in our own homes by the people who we love; our spouses, our siblings, our relatives, men in the streets, on our way to the well. As a woman, almost everywhere seems unsafe. As a woman, I am used to being harassed, not because of how I dress (and there is nothing wrong with how most women dress) but because I am a woman. And the men get away with it because they think it’s their responsibility to treat women the way they want. In order for women to live peacefully, we need peace in the homes, in the streets, where we can walk without being harassed.

Sometimes, I dream about the time that no child will undergo genital mutilation, no woman will be whistled to by men on the streets, homes where women feel safe and loved and not worry about defilement, rape or incest. And this is not something that is hard for us to do, but why can’t we do them? Why can’t we love women? Why can’t we treat women with respect? We all want peace but we never want another person to be peaceful.

This year, AWDF has commissioned six of the participants of the FEMRITE/AWDF non-fiction writers workshop to blog about the issues highlighted on each day of the campaign. This year’s writers include: Jennifer Thorpe from South Africa and Njoki Wamai from Kenya who through interviews with AWDF grantee partners and using an analysis of women’s rights organising focus on how communities can get involved to end violence against women. Eunice Kilonzo from Kenya and Kechi Nomu from Nigeria focus on issues of HIV/AIDS and disability how they have impacted on women on the continent and some of the strategies of resistance that we see emerging; and finally to close the series on December 10^th, Valerie Bah from the DRC tells the story of a Togolese woman who has faced a widowhood rite, and contextualizes it against the advocacy work being done by AWDF grantee partners there.

Every year, AWDF provides resources to women’s organizations and groups all over Africa who are working to end gender-based violence in Africa. To support the 2014 global campaign to end violence against women, AWDF will support small to medium scale women’s rights organizations across Africa to lend their voice to the campaign to end violence against women. AWDF will support initiatives by women’s organizations and groups in Africa working to: address stigma and discrimination against women living with HIV/AIDS; empower women living with HIV to participate effectively and take the lead in the HIV response in their various communities; and to amplify the voices of women living with HIV. For several years AWDF has recognised the importance of providing grants to support activities to mark 16 Days of Activism and remains committed to this work.

I am glad that women are doing everything to make every woman safe in this world, and men have joined in the fight. Some men need to know that the woman is as important and human as they are, and we should be treated with respect and love. Every woman must help each other fight violence against women. As Maya Angelou once said, “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”

 

Beatrice Lamwaka was born in Gulu in northern Uganda, and now lives in Kampala. She is the General Secretary Uganda Women’s Writers Association (FEMRITE) and a freelance writer with Monitor Newspaper, UGPulse and the Press Institute. She was shortlisted for 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing and finalist for the PEN/Studzinski Literary Award 2009. Her short stories have appeared in Caine Prize anthologies, To See the Mountain and other stories, and African Violet and Other Stories. And other anthologies including: Butterfly Dreams and Other Stories from Uganda, New Writing from Africa 2009, Words from A Granary, World of Our Own, Farming Ashes, Summoning the Rains, Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction, PMS poemmemoirstory journal, among others. She is working on her first novel and a collection of short stories.