In 2021, the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is the theme of the year. In 1991, 25 women from northern and southern countries launched this campaign. This movement has been one of the most sustainable and successful civil campaigns against gender-based violence in the world, and over the past 30 years, more than 6,000 organizations from 185 countries have participated in it. It is estimated that 300 million people have been involved in their global 16 Days of Activism campaign.

The women who came together in the first session of the “Global Women’s Leadership Institute” had no idea that this campaign would become the most well-known and longest-running campaign for women’s rights in the world. At the 30th anniversary conference of this campaign, held in collaboration with the civil institution “Global Women’s Leadership Institute”, Ratgers University, and the United Nations Population Fund on September 23, 2021 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, a report on three decades of this campaign’s activities was discussed. At this conference, gender-based violence was identified as a major global challenge and concern, and many speakers highlighted the achievements and challenges of three decades of this campaign, emphasizing instances of sexual and gender-based violence in both private and public spheres as a process of gender power dynamics and structural violence in the patriarchal system. The speakers emphasized that this campaign is based on feminist values and principles of human rights and social justice, and believes that a world without violence is possible

This campaign starts every year on November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and ends on December 10th, which is the International Human Rights Day. November 25th is a day that commemorates the murder of three sisters, Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa Mirabal, by the Dominican dictator in 1960. During this 16-day period between November 25th and December 10th, there are other occasions as well. November 29th is the International Day of Support for Human Rights Defenders, December 1st is World AIDS Day, December 5th is the International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development, and December 6th is the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, a day to remember violence against women in Canada.

This campaign was born during the formation of the global women’s movement. Since the 1970s, global networks for women’s rights have been growing and expanding, with the facilitation of the United Nations Women’s Conferences in Mexico in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, and Nairobi in 1985. While today we take this for granted and there is a general understanding that women’s rights are human rights, the reality is that it took decades for feminists to create the groundwork for this understanding, that the violation of women’s human rights, particularly violence against women, is not a private matter and is not outside the scope of government responsibility. The first step of this campaign began with a petition for the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, held in Vienna, and with the presentation of a draft for this conference to comprehensively address women’s human rights and recognize gender-based violence as a human rights issue. It is worth noting that this activity took place at a time

Furthermore, this campaign has been carried on the shoulders of human rights activists, feminists, grassroots organizations, and United Nations agencies for the past three decades to promote awareness and accountability of governments and non-governmental forces. In fact, this campaign, which started in 1991, played a key role in the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 and the United Nations Conference on Racism in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, to bring the issue of violence against women from the margins to the center of global discussions as a violation of human rights.

The objectives of this campaign were as follows:

1- Raising awareness about gender-based violence and promoting a culture that recognizes it as a gross violation of human rights at the national, regional, and international levels.

2- Strengthening and creating a bridge of communication between local activities and global gender-based violence.

3 – Creation of an extensive network in which organizers can share effective, innovative, and new strategies with local activists.

4- Showing solidarity among women at a global level to organize against gender-based violence.

5- Holding governments accountable and expecting them to fulfill their commitments made by signing international laws and conventions.

6 – Emphasizing the fact that violence against women is a global challenge and requires a multi-layered global action to combat it.

Over the past three decades, each year a theme has been chosen for this international campaign to address various forms of gender-based violence in both private and public spheres. The first theme of the campaign in 1991 was “Violence against women is a violation of human rights” and it was repeated in 1992. In 1993, the chosen theme was “Democracy in the family, democracy in families” and in 1994, the theme was “16 days of global action to end gender-based violence – awareness, accountability, and action”. In 1995 (the year of the fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing), considering the key role of international conferences in highlighting the issue of “violence against women as a violation of human rights”, the same theme was chosen. The mentioned international conferences included the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, the Cairo Population and Development Conference in 1994, and the Copenhagen Social Development Summit in 1995, and

“16-Day Global Campaign to Fight Violence Against Women at 27 Years Old” was a comprehensive review of the processes of this campaign. The campaign invited 10 organizations from around the world to share their experiences, criticisms, and recommendations regarding the campaign at the local level. The World Organization for Women’s Leadership believed that among local activists, there are effective insights and solutions to eradicate various forms of violence. One of the processes of this comprehensive review was that, although the fight against gender violence has spread through the efforts and perseverance of feminist activists and the advancement of technology and the emergence of social media, due to the lack of political will and allocation of necessary budgets for sustainable, fundamental, radical, and systematic changes at the level that the foundation of this campaign hoped for, it has not been achieved. Along with this comprehensive review, in 2015, the International Labor Organization, a body in which governments, employers, and workers are present, initiated projects to combat harassment and violence against women and men

The subject of the campaign for this year.

The theme of the 2021 campaign is “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence,” which has been declared as “Femicide.” The most common form of femicide is committed by intimate partners and accounts for 35-40% of women’s murders worldwide. Western and Southern Asia have the highest rates of honor killings and killing of women and girls due to sexual assault and actual or perceived sexual behaviors such as adultery and sexual intercourse. Racial discrimination cannot be separated from femicide as they are intertwined. The femicide of twelve young black women in Boston, which received little attention from the media in America, or the disappearance of indigenous women in Canada, or the cases of femicide in Mexico, are still fresh in people’s minds. Women make up 17% of intentional homicides worldwide and 137 women are killed every day. In the past years, there were 5,000 cases of honor killings worldwide, but the actual number is estimated to be 20,000

Some also consider misogyny as a crime of hatred. Diana Russell was the first feminist writer to define the term misogyny in 1976 as the killing of women by men due to their gender. 13.5% of all murders in the world are committed by intimate partners. Women bear the highest burden of murder by their partners on a global level. The stark difference between female victims, which make up 82%, and male victims, which make up 18%, highlights the deep dimensions of the phenomenon of misogyny (1). Other forms of misogyny include mass misogyny, honor killings, religious misogyny, the disappearance of women in trafficking and sexual exploitation, racial misogyny, misogyny due to not providing dowry, gender selection of infants, and death as a result of sexual objectification. A world without gender-based violence is possible and it is believed that many feminists and human rights activists are energized in the fight for such a world.

Note:

1- For more information, refer to: .

Report.

Official United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report on drug and crime in 2019.