International Day Against Violence Against Women--16 Days Campaign

Today, 25 November 2007 is International Day Against Violence Against Women and the start of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence (25 Nov-10 Dec).

You can read more about this campaign, history, and get materials from the Center for Women's Global Leadership, [Rutgers University-USA] including the 2007 Take Action Kit & the 2007 International Calendar. This site also contains a library on related resources on VAW and even a map to situate and log your activities. This site has materials in English, Spanish, some French and even Italian.

An interesting ICT action, is Take Back the Tech or Reclaiming ICTs to End Violence Against Women. Link here to learn more about what are the issues of ICTs & VAW From the website: "Both ICTs and VAW affects our capacity to completely enjoy our human rights and fundamental freedoms." This site has materials in French, Spanish, and English.




The website contains daily activities such as ka-Blog (blogathon, postcards, digital story telling, digital media resources, and GIFs to use in your website or blog during the campaign. On today- Day one, today's activity: share a number of your local shelter or resource centre.

Both sites want to hear more about your stories and actions and you can also learn more about actions-stories in other locales-sites.

As readers already know, I have been very interested in Justice for Nadine (survivor of spousal abuse and rape) and Rahela (the late tortured garment worker) as detailed in previous posts and links to websites. Most recently, Abdul Kargo wrote movingly about Nadine's case, "What is a woman worth. " If readers would like to know more about domestic violence issues-support in USA or Bangladesh, see this link. The next hearing for Rahela's case will be in January 2008in Bangladesh.

****Check out a new resource from January 2008: New Blogsite OUT AGAINST ABUSE to educate and organize the South Asian Community about domestic violence-gender abuse--please read, comment, and discuss this resource!****

Finally, Bangladesh continues to recover from the Category 5 hurricane, Cyclone Sidr. In such disasters, women have special health and security issues, especially post disaster for women without husbands and children who have lost their parents--suffer from insecurity and vulnerability to abusers and traffickers. I described a few issues here and as Sidr was heading to shore. See also Nari Jibon blog.I will post more on these topics coming days. Meanwhile, go to other previous posts-links on where you can donate for relief efforts.