Archive for October, 2009

Lobby to stop violence against women

23rd October 2009 by agnes 7 Comments »

Categories: Social Media & Campaigns violence against women

The UK Government is obliged to protect, respect and fulfil women’s human rights. As the 2010 general election is coming up and a change of government is possible, all political parties must address violence against women.

On Wednesday 4 November, hundreds people asked their MP to ensure that all women in the UK are given equal access to support and protection from violence – regardless of their immigration status.

It is vital that we keep up this pressure. You can help us do this via email or on Twitter.  Act now

The story so far – towards a violence against women strategy

We have been campaigning the government to uphold their obligations towards women’s rights.

  • In March, we petitioned MPs about the lack of support services for women – pointing out the huge gaps in services across Britain, illustrated in the Map of Gaps reports.
  • In May, the Home Office launched a public consultation to develop a ‘violence against women’ strategy. We fed into this, demanding that the strategy tackles destructive social attitudes around violence against women and that it plans services for minority ethnic women facing violence such as genital mutilation and honour crimes.
  • We have campaigned constantly for women with insecure immigration status to be given access to refuges. At the moment, if these women suffer violence they have nowhere to go; this is because of the no recourse to public funds rule. This must be overturned in order to end violence against all women in Britain.

UK political parties have been listening. The Government has committed to developing a ‘Together we can end violence against women and girls’ strategy by 2010, and a proposal for dealing with the problems facing women with no recourse to public funds, who cannot access refuges.

We need to keep up the pressure to ensure they fulfil these promises effectively.

The next step – lobby your MP

We need you to ask your MP for their support and commitment to help victims of violence against women – giving all women in the UK equal access to support and protection from violence.

If you would prefer to contact your MP via email, check out your MPs contact details on writetothem.com and have a read of our suggested requests for your MP  to include in your email.

If you are on Twitter and would rather tweet your MP, find out if your MP is also on Twitter by searching for them on Tweetminster – If they are, follow them (on Twitter). Then tweet your MP the message below, including the link as this will take your MP to a PDF with more detailed requests:

Make sure UK guarantees equal protection for all women in the UK facing violence http://bit.ly/2mLkH4

Spread the word

We want the government to be overwhelmed with requests for all women in the UK to have equal access to services and protection. This means that we need to get the word out – and we really need your help to do this.

Spread the message:

Lobby your MP to make sure that all women can access refuges and support services in Britain http://bit.ly/1gQTpJ

on Twitter using the hashtag #masslobby

On Facebook by updating your status, or by writing it on your friends’ walls

On your blog by posting about the lobby so that your fans find out about it. Even better, they might blog about it too, and then their readers might also blog on it and soon we will have an excellent end violence against women strategy that provides for all women, all over Britain.

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Rape in Chad, Bosnia – and right here in the city.

2nd October 2009 by agnes 1 Comment »

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Categories: violence against women

For the last two days, reports of women’s rights abuses have dominated the homepage of our site amnesty.org.uk, bringing the subject of violence against women to the fore of Amnesty UK’s online campaigning.

Two of the items concern women’s rights in conflict and post conflict situations, one of the 2 most dangerous situations for women in today’s world.  In Bosnia and Herzogovina, the people who raped women during the 1992-1995 conflict have still not been brought to justice.  In Chadian refugee camps, women who have escaped the Darfur conflict continue to face further sexual violence and rape. 

In both of these cases, the women are not just victims of rape – but victims of how society relates to their situation. The Bosnian authorities have failed thousands of rape survivors by not providing them with the the support they need and the reparations they deserve for these war crimes.  In Chad, women are ostracised for having been raped and face rejection from current or prospective husbands; to add to their plight, it is the very people who are looking after the women in the camps that are raping them. 

Sexual violence is inescapable for these women. To varying degrees, violence against women is accepted by all societies  worldwide – making it an inescapable reality of our times. While politically unstable countries seem an obvious environment for mass violence against women, the other most dangerous envrionment for women is in fact the home. The home – that is, in any and every country. 

At last night’s launch of the book Created Equal, the pervasive nature of violence against women was brought into sharp relief.  Clips from Rape in the City (channel 4 Dispatches) showed how widespread violent attitudes towards women are in London.  An informal street interview with a group of young young men quickly revealed a belief that sexual violence serves as a just punishment for women who are seen to insult or offend them.  I was left in disgusted shock, seeing how casually and confidently these men relayed what they would do to ‘offending’ women; listening to a 14 year old girl talk about how she became the victim of gang rape left me reeling.

How to change this situation was a key question for last night’s panel. Damion Carnell of the Nottinghamshire Domestic Violence Forum believes we need to educate young men and boys on non-violence towards women. For producer of Rape in the City, Karen Edwards, it is perhaps raising awareness to incentivise people to take action in their own communities. For Patrick Stewart, who witnessed domestic violence against his mother when he was young, it is patronising and supporting women’s aid organisations and Amnesty’s Stop Violence Against Women Campaign.

So back to our homepage. It is because so many women face the horror of sexual violence everywhere that Amnesty reports so prolifically on it. It is startling to what level women are at risk from gender based violence (i.e. because they are women) in the world today.  It is of course our duty to shout about it, show people that women’s rights are being abused - and to give you the opportunity to do something about it. So here it is:  please pay attention to each item on the homepage and help women who have suffered or are suffering violence in Bosnia, Chad, here – and everywhere.

See Patrick Stewart talk about his ecperience of violence against women – watch the video below.

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