‘Why do we harm our women and children?’
To seek help for you or someone you know, you can contact the STOP Gender Violence Helpline at 0800 150 150 or Childline at 0800 055 555.
16 Days of Activism is a worldwide campaign that aims to “raise awareness of the negative impact that violence and abuse have on women and children and to rid society of abuse permanently,” according to www.parliament.gov.za started on November 25.
The awareness campaign calls for zero tolerance towards gender-based violence and violence against children and runs until December 10.
The 16 Days of Activism campaign was birthed at the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute, organised by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership in 1991, which started in 1998 in South Africa as an intervention strategy.
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The objectives of 16 Days of Activism include: To attract all South Africans to be active participants in the fight to eradicate violence against women and children.
To expand accountability beyond the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster to include all government clusters and provinces.
To combine technology, social media, the arts, journalism, religion, culture and customs, business and activism to draw attention to the many ways violence against women and children affects the lives of all people in all communities around the world.
To ensure the mass mobilisation of all communities to promote collective responsibility in the fight to eradicate violence against women and children.
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To encourage society to acknowledge that violence against women and children is not a government or criminal justice system problem, but a societal problem, and that failure to view it as such results in all efforts failing to eradicate this scourge in our communities.
Finally, to emphasise the fact that the solution lies with all of us. Violence against women and children can occur in various forms.
This includes physical violence, such as domestic violence and violent crimes (i.e. murder, rape and assault), emotional violence and trauma and ‘the violence of poverty’, starvation, humiliation and degradation.”
To show your support for the campaign, you can wear a white ribbon throughout the 16 days of activism.
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According to Africa Check, major-general Sally de Beer, the South African Police Service’s head of corporate communication, confirmed that between April and December 2016, the police recorded a total of 14,333 murders, of which 1,713 were women.
This means that one woman is murdered every four hours in South Africa, with one woman murdered every eight hours by their intimate partner.
To seek help for you or someone you know, you can contact the STOP Gender Violence Helpline at 0800 150 150 or Childline at 0800 055 555.
