It’s that time of the year again when the world commemorates the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence (GBV), an international campaign commemorated every year since 1991. The main objective of the campaign is to raise awareness about GBV as a human rights issue at the local, national, regional and international levels.
 
The 16 Days campaign kicks off on November 25, which is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and ends on December 10, which is the International Human Rights Day. All the dates within this period symbolically link violence against women and human rights and emphasise that such violence is a violation of human rights .

While societies are ideally encouraged to fight GBV every day throughout the year, gender activists across the world intensify the fight during this period.

There are a number of important dates which also fall within this period. Some of the important dates are as follows:

• 25 November: International Day for the elimination of Violence Against Women
• 1 December: World AIDS Day - World AIDS Day
• 3 December: International Day for the Disabled
• 5 December: International Volunteer Day
• 6 December: the Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre
• 10 December: Human Rights Day

Key issues and story ideas:-

• The media can raise awareness about the different types of GBV and encourage everyone to do their best to end GBV.

• The global theme for this year’s 16 Days campaign is ‘Commit, Act, Demand: We can end violence against women’. The theme encourages individuals, organisations and governments to commit themselves to end GBV and also to take action on the commitments they have made to ending violence against women. The media needs to look at how far their countries have gone towards ensuring the end of GBV and bringing to book those who perpetrate violence against others. 

• The media can take stock of the various countries’ targets to ending GBV. According to Article 20 of the SADC gender and development protocol states that parties shall, by 2015 enact and enforce legislation prohibiting all forms of gender based violence and ensure that perpetrators of GBV including domestic violence, rape, femicide, sexual harassment, female genital mutilation and all other forms of GBV are tried by a court of competent jurisdiction.

• Look at how different countries with laws that criminalise GBV are putting this into practice. The media can also lobby for countries without laws that criminalise GBV to formulate policies around this.

• Reports from across the world show that women constitute the majority of GBV victims. However, this does not mean there are no female perpetrators of violence. There is need to look into this issue and also focus on those men who are victims of GBV and how they can be assisted. These stories from the people need to be told and can be a starting point in lobbying for policy formulation.

• Journalists can also raise awareness of the various activities that will be taking place in different countries to commemorate the 16 Days campaign. If your country only starts talking about human rights and violence during the 16 Days campaign, it is high time you wrote a feature challenging policy makers to commit to fighting any type of violence and human rights abuses every day of the year. 

Sources

1. http://www.cladem.org/english/news/Protocol%20on%20Gender%20August%202008%20-%20English0001(4).pdf

2. http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/16days/kit09/theme.html

3. http://www.saynotoviolence.org/join-say-no/16-days-activism-against-gender-violence-campaign