The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women is celebrated around the world on November 25 each year. The Day was established by the United Nations in 1999, inviting governments, UN agencies, and other organisations to organise activities aimed at raising public awareness of the problem of violence against women.
The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women also marks the commencement of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, an annual international campaign that calls for the prevention of violence against women and girls worldwide. This year, the theme of the campaign is “Orange the World: End Violence Against Women Now!”
The term, “violence against women”, was coined to address the specific ways in which sexual and gender-based violence (SBGV) affects women and girls. According to Article 1 of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the term means:
any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.
It is no secret that women and girls are disproportionately affected by SGBV. By conservative estimates, about 1 in 3 women and girls experience SGBV in their lifetime. This manifests in different forms, including physical violence, sexual violence, financial abuse, and emotional, verbal or psychological abuse. Undoubtedly, SGBV is a vice that must be eliminated from our society.
At FYCI, we believe in the use of creative art forms such as music, poetry, drama, and so on to evoke emotions and influence behaviours. We also believe that young people, who form the overwhelming majority of Nigeria’s population, are the perfect agents to drive this change. Against this context, we are instituting an annual Young Voices Against SBGV Award to commemorate the 16 Days campaign.
To receive the award, participants will have to enter a competition, using creative art forms to express lessons on sexual and gender-based violence and/or the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act passed in Nigeria. Through this competition, we hope to stimulate anti-SGBV discourse among youth, as well as encourage them to join the fight against SGBV. For more details about the competition, click here.
Great initiative