Campaign To Stop Violence Against Women

[CCADP]

www.amnesty.ca/stoptheviolence/overview.php

Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women

Campaign Overview

Do you hear it?

It's the world's most pervasive human rights violation. It's the violation most often ignored.

Every minute of every day, women and girls around the world are assaulted, threatened, raped, mutilated, killed.

Can you see it?

It's happening right now in homes, streets, schools, workplaces. It's happening in court rooms, prisons, legislatures, war zones.

Women are routinely denied the protection that is their right. And those who carry out acts of violence are rarely brought to justice.

It's time to see violence against women as a global human rights crisis. It's time to expose the silence that confronts so many women and girls when they seek justice, safety and rehabilitation. Violence against women is everyone's problem.

It's time to speak out

Human rights violations stop when enough people demand change. Join Amnesty International’s global campaign to stop violence against women.

Each voice counts. Your voice can make the difference.

Refuse to accept violence against women in your family, community, school and workplace. Support women who are working to end violence. Take action online. Tell others about Amnesty's campaign.

Violence Against Women - It's about power

The United Nations Declaration on Violence Against Women calls gender-based violence "a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between women and men" and a means by which this inequality can be maintained.

We know that violence of all kinds is experienced by women in a variety of ways every day in every part of the world. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Together, we will...

* Challenge government and public complacency about violence against women.
* Support women to defend their rights.
* Call for justice.
* Ensure that women and girls can escape violence and rebuild healthy lives.
* Be a part of the solution.

We have the power to effect change. The women's movement has long been a powerful force against the tide of violence. But violence against women is everyone's problem. The time is now to add our voices to the struggle for a world free of violence against women.

We're going global

Working with women's activists, advocates and rights defenders, Amnesty International has launched this two year public awareness and action campaign to end violence against women. As a worldwide initiative of Amnesty International, this is a priority campaign for nearly two million Amnesty supporters in more than 150 countries and territories across the planet.

And now you're a part of it.

A two year initiative

Phase one of the campaign will focus on awareness raising in order to get the subject of violence against women back into the public discourse.

The second phase of the campaign will continue the awareness raising work while turning attention to the silence which surrounds the pattern of disappearances of Native women in Canada. An international report will be released by Amnesty International on this issue in late spring 2004.

In the third phase of the campaign, we will look at Canada's role abroad and domestically to stop violence against women and girls. Our "Human Rights Agenda for Canada" (a yearly submission to the Canadian government) will include a number of recommendations to the Canadian government to improve its record on stopping violence.

Subsequent phases will deal with a range of women's human rights issues found in the web of rights violations that are rooted in unequal power relations between women and men. We will use the campaign to expose the many forms of violence experienced daily by women and girls across the planet. This violence CAN be stopped. It doesn't have to be this way.

[CCADP]

Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women

Campaign Overview continued...

CONTENTS
Campaign Overview
Take Action
Get Involved
Learn More
Have Your Say
What's Here / Help
Slideshow


Silence is Violence

Violence Against Women - It's about power

The United Nations Declaration on Violence Against Women calls gender-based violence "a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between women and men" and a means by which this inequality can be maintained.

We know that violence of all kinds is experienced by women in a variety of ways every day in every part of the world. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Together, we will...

* Challenge government and public complacency about violence against women.
* Support women to defend their rights.
* Call for justice.
* Ensure that women and girls can escape violence and rebuild healthy lives.
* Be a part of the solution.

We have the power to effect change. The women's movement has long been a powerful force against the tide of violence. But violence against women is everyone's problem. The time is now to add our voices to the struggle for a world free of violence against women.

We're going global

Working with women's activists, advocates and rights defenders, Amnesty International has launched this two year public awareness and action campaign to end violence against women. As a worldwide initiative of Amnesty International, this is a priority campaign for nearly two million Amnesty supporters in more than 150 countries and territories across the planet.

And now you're a part of it.

A two year initiative

Phase one of the campaign will focus on awareness raising in order to get the subject of violence against women back into the public discourse.

The second phase of the campaign will continue the awareness raising work while turning attention to the silence which surrounds the pattern of disappearances of Native women in Canada. An international report will be released by Amnesty International on this issue in late spring 2004.

In the third phase of the campaign, we will look at Canada's role abroad and domestically to stop violence against women and girls. Our "Human Rights Agenda for Canada" (a yearly submission to the Canadian government) will include a number of recommendations to the Canadian government to improve its record on stopping violence.

Subsequent phases will deal with a range of women's human rights issues found in the web of rights violations that are rooted in unequal power relations between women and men. We will use the campaign to expose the many forms of violence experienced daily by women and girls across the planet. This violence CAN be stopped. It doesn't have to be this way.

Violence against women CAN be stopped

Violence against women may feel like a reality, but it doesn't have to be this way. This campaign will draw attention to the various roots of violence against women and call for proactive steps to be taken to end it.

Preventing acts of violence against women from happening would be only a step towards the full eradication of violence against women. In order to truly end violence against women, the factors which lead to that violence must change. All of these factors relate to the fundamental issue of equality:

* the fundamental needs of women and girls are not seen as rights or are seen as secondary to the rights and prerogatives of men and boys

* the economic, social and political marginalization of women makes women and girls highly vulnerable to violence

* differences from the dominant culture, for example, by ethnicity, religion or sexuality, are often seen as justification for human rights abuses

In order to encourage society and governments to do everything possible to prevent violence, this campaign will focus on the fundamental causes and conditions that make women and girls highly vulnerable to violence, that prevent them from living in safe environments and that deny them access to justice and rehabilitation.

WE WILL...

Challenge the values, attitudes and behaviours that contribute to the unequal distribution of power (discrimination) to women and girls, and result in violence against them.

Why Amnesty International and why now?

For decades, our work has focused primarily on violence and other abuses that are inflicted at the hands of state agents, such as torture, extrajudicial killings and "disappearances". The focus on certain forms of political repression meant that the majority of victims on whose behalf Amnesty International worked tended to be men.

Violence against women, particularly violence against women in the home, has been hidden, ignored and left off the human rights agenda, despite its massive scale. We need to highlight violence against women in order to redress this earlier lack of attention.

Violence against women is a human rights issue. We bring the power and persuasion of an integrated human rights framework which reinforces accountability for violence against women, points to obligations of the state and others, and perhaps most significantly, makes a critical connection between violence and the deprivation of other rights of women.

Our work on women's human rights is neither brand new nor traditional. We have gradually increased our attention to and analysis of women's human rights matters.

This campaign on violence against women is the largest concerted global campaign on a focused women's human rights issue.

We are working alongside those people fighting to end violence against women at the grassroots level around the world. From shelters to medical and legal clinics, from community centres to service organizations, from meeting rooms to conflict resolution tables in war zones, front line workers and advocates have long been at the front of this struggle.

As Amnesty International, our best contribution will be to complement their work, not duplicate it.

We are proud to join the women and men already leading brave and inspiring campaigns against this violence.