RIGHTS: Internet Used to Combat Gender Violence

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 1999 (IPS) - The United Nations is using the global information superhighway – the Internet – in a worldwide major campaign to combat violence against women.

“More than 1,300 women and men around the world, front-line workers against violence, have been e-mailing each other for months, comparing experiences and sharing strategies to fight gender violence,” says Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

She says that UNIFEM, in partnership with the World Bank, has initiated several discussion groups on the Internet – titled “End Violence” – primarily to share some of the anti-violence strategies that have been successful.

“It has shown us the possibilities of modern technology to facilitate a different kind of globalisation – one that created a global community of purpose to fight a global problem,” she adds.

As part of its campaign, UNIFEM held a much-publicised Global Interagency Video Conference last month, linking the UN General Assembly with sites in Nairobi, New Delhi, Mexico City and the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

The event also aimed at reaching the younger generation through links to more than 2,000 universities. Titled “A World Free of Violence against Women,” the programme was broadcast via satellite to audiences worldwide.

“The programmes highlighted at the Video Conference – and the Video Conference itself – represented a ground-breaking collaboration between several UN agencies in their (collective) effort to eliminate violence against women around the world,” Heyzer says.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called such violence “the most shameful of all human rights abuses.”

“No violence against women should be tolerated or ever go unpunished,” he told the Video Conference, urging the UN’s 185 member states to enact and enforce laws and “create a world safe for women and girls.”

Last year, UNIFEM brought together an unprecedented number of UN agencies, government representatives, national and regional non- governmental organisations (NGOs) and thousands of community-based groups and media organisations in a series of campaigns to eliminate gender violence.

According to Heyzer, these events have been pivotal in creating a favourable environment for the introduction of changes in policies and in national legislation.

“The campaigns also have contributed to opening discussion on issues traditionally considered taboo and have raised questions about male involvement in the eradication of gender-based violence,” she notes.

Additionally, these campaigns have mobilised political will and have re-energized a constituency to advocate for changes in key institutions such as a criminal justice system, health care, media and education.

Heyzer says that the campaigns are already beginning to show results. In Brazil, for example, about 1,200 national NGOs and local governments have subscribed to the “Community Pact against Family Violence” launched by the Ministry of Justice.

In Ecuador, representatives from 18 countries from the Americas and Europe signed the Quito Declaration last year which commits police and justice personnel to apply international and regional conventions in responding to sexual crimes against women of all ages.

In India, 40,000 posters detailing women’s rights have been printed in 14 local dialects for distribution to every police station in the country, helping to ensure that ignorance of the law and women’s rights is no longer an excuse for turning a blind- eye to violence against women.

In Senegal, a ground-breaking law banning the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is being implemented nationally over a three-year period in conjunction with a campaign to educate the public on the harmful consequences of the practice.

Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), says that FGM is a “horrific example of institutionalised oppression of girls.”

“We must be aggresing in exposing the culture of secrecy that surrounds this practice,” she adds.

According to UNFPA several African countries have banned the practice and progress has been made in more than a dozen of the 28 African states where the practice still persists.

“Ending violence against women and girls – in our families, communities and societies – remains the greatest challenge facing humanity on the even of the 21st century,” Heyzer says.

“Women are attacked on the street, in the workplace, in the home, in situations of armed conflict, and while in state custody. Violence against women devastates lives, fractures communities, and is a barrier to development in every nation.”