16 Days to Imagine a World Without Gender-Based Violence
Imagine a teenage girl in India who must choose between cutting her education short or walking to school every day past groups of hungry-eyed, catcalling men. Or a little boy in Sierra Leone whose teacher thinks beatings are an appropriate punishment for male students who misbehave. Or get even closer to home: Imagine a girl in the U.S. who finally gathers the courage to tell a guidance counselor about the boy who groped her in the cafeteria, only to see him go unpunished.
These scenarios might be painful, but chances are, they aren’t too difficult to visualize. That’s because gender-based violence (GBV) is common in every country around the world — traditional and progressive, rich and poor alike. It’s so culturally pervasive that we often accept it as a matter of course.
The annual international 16 Days of Activism Against GBV hopes to take those attitudes of passive acceptance and transform them into compassionate action against GBV, defined as all forms of violence that occur on the basis of an individual’s biological sex, gender identity or adherence to norms of masculinity or femininity. In other words, if it’s an attack against someone because they are female or male — or perhaps because they’re not performing their socially defined female or male roles well enough — it can probably be classified as GBV. GBV disproportionately affects women and girls, and it has a particularly devastating impact on children.
This year, as part of a larger commitment to expand our programs and advocacy work in child protection, ChildFund is joining hundreds of other organizations across the globe to shed light on GBV against children. GBV can ravage children’s lives in an almost infinite number of ways, from sexual abuse, assault and harassment to child marriage, female infanticide and more.
It’s not enough to know that GBV exists or even to raise awareness about it. It’s time to bring our communities’, our countries’ and our world’s shared problem with GBV out of the shadows by taking concrete action against it.
This year’s 16 Days theme is “Together We Can End GBV in Education.” From now until the campaign ends on Dec. 10, we’ll be sharing stats and stories on our advocacy Twitter handle about how we’re working to combat GBV, especially in school settings. We’ll be joining hands with a local girls’ empowerment organization to contact our representatives in Congress on issues that affect children’s access to quality education. And of course, in spite of the season’s typical reds and greens, we’ll be wearing a whole lot of purple, the color of the campaign.
In a better world, we wouldn’t be able to imagine instances of GBV against children so easily because they would be unthinkable. Let’s try to imagine that world in the coming days and weeks — the one all children deserve, regardless of gender or gender identity.
Consider yourself challenged!
