Ending Violence Articles

FAWCO's Join Me on the Bridge Campaign

By Therese Hartwell

Neighboring countries Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been torn apart by the worst atrocities of war that the world has seen in recent years, including the commonplace rape and torture of women as a weapon of war. In 2010, women from opposing sides of war in these communities came together on a bridge adjoining the two countries. These women met to say "No" to war and "Yes" to peace and to show that they could build bridges of hope for the future. This action sparked a massive global movement through Women for Women International's Join Me on the Bridge campaign. In 2011 and 2012, Rwandan and Congolese women were joined by thousands of people on hundreds of bridges worldwide from Sydney to Paris, and Accra to Ontario in a plea for global peace.

During the 2013 FAWCO conference in Bern, conference attendees will participate in Women for Women's 2013 Join Me on the Bridge campaign on March 8, International Women's Day. EVAWAC invites all FAWCO clubs to share in this effort by planning an event of your own to stand with women in war torn countries to show we support their demands for peace and equality. Now is the time for women around the world to unite in building bridges. You will find all the information you need to plan an event at

http://joinmeonthebridge.org/page/how-to-organise-1. The event can be as simple or elaborate as you wish. If your club chooses to, you can use your Bridge event to raise funds to support Women for Women's year-long life skills program that assists women in war torn countries in moving from being victims, to survivors, to active citizens.  To learn more about the work of the organization visit their website athttp://www.womenforwomen.org.uk/.

EVAWAC wants to know about your plans to stand in solidarity with women victims of war. Please send a description of the plans for your event to Therese Hartwell and address questions to her at .

Two More Reasons to Join Us on the Bridge

Rape and Torture in Syria

A report in The Guardian documents that rape is being used as a weapon of war in Syria. The women and girls who manage to make it across the border cite sexual violence as their main reason for fleeing. "During interviews with 240 Syrian women and girls in Lebanon and Jordan, IRC learned of attacks involving kidnap, rape, torture and murder, with Syria's many roadblocks a particular danger." They recounted, "Being attacked in public and in their homes, primarily by armed men. The rapes, sometimes by several men, often occurred in front of family members." As of January 612,000 Syrians were registered as refugees in neighboring countries.

To read the article in its entirety, go to:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/jan/14/syrian-women-girls-sexual-violence

Sexual Assault in Egypt

"Two years ago, the world witnessed Egyptian women and men in Tahrir square and across Egypt calling for change and exercising their political and civil rights to public assembly and expression. As a vibrant force in civil society, women continue to press for their rights, equal participation in decision making, and the upholding of the principles of the revolution by the highest levels of leadership in Egypt. UN Women is deeply disturbed by the gravity of recent attacks against women, including the reports of sexual assault, many of which occurred in the same Tahrir Square in which women rallied to contribute to a better future for their country."

http://www.unwomen.org/2013/01/executive-director-of-un-women-michelle-bachelet-expresses-deep-concern-over-escalating-violence-against-women-in-egypt/

FAWCO Members Are Making a Difference 

Nadira Artyk, AAWE Paris, founded a charity to educate and mentor girls in Central Asia. For more information on her program, go towww.bilqa.com

Jill Bourdais, AAWE Paris, Psychologist, runs a support group for women experiencing abuse.

Madeline Morrow, former AWC London member, 

supports Open a Door, which is

providing potential female leaders from crisis countries (Rwanda in particular) access to college degrees by matching them with mentors who help them apply for US International Scholarships. For details please go to http://www.openadoorfoundation.org/  

Therese Hartwell, EVAWAC executive committee and AW Eastern Province member , Saudi Arabia

will join the World Brain program on the Education of Women and Girls in Rawanda (the deadline for registration for this trip is March 9^th)

 https://goworldbrain.com/trips/education-of-women-and-girls-in-rwanda 

And last year she participated in Women for Women UK March of Peace

http://www.womenforwomen.org.uk/events-supporting-women/bosnia-peace-march.php. 

You can contact Therese if you are interested in participating or for more info on either of these programs  

Yolanda Henry, Vice President of FAUSA,

is a Team Leader and regular building volunteer for Tabitha Cambodia. Their next trip will be November 1-7, 2014. For more information about Tabitha go to www.tabitha.ca. About House Building go to http://www.tabitha-cambodia.org/main/house_building.html 

Or contact Yolanda.

Tamara Chant, AWG Paris,

is on the Board of Nepal Orphans Home, whose mission is children who are orphaned, abandoned or not supported by their parents. 

The following was written by one of the children at the home:

In Sunita's own words, written in 2012 and translated from Nepali:

"My name is Sunita, on May 15th 2012 I am 17 years old. The photo on the left in 2007 in Narti at Papa's Lawajuni House was taken by Papa. I had been living there after my rescue by SWAN.

I do not remember my parents but I know my father disappeared and then my mother married another man and she also left. I know that I have four brothers, but only two have I met recently. I remember being taken to India and then leaving there alone, walking back towards Nepal. One night I am sleeping on the road and a man asked if I wanted to work in his home, I did not know what to do, so I said ok. I was taking care of the baby and cooking, cleaning after the family and all the outside work. At night I also had to care for the baby.

At night the owner of the house would come home drunk and pound on the door, I would open the door and he would beat me. They always told me my work was very bad and never let me to rest. They would never give money and the food was not good. I asked a family near if I could take their cow and buffalo to the field to eat and they gave me a little money. The house owner found out and beat me and took the money. Sometimes the family beat me with sticks.

Neighbors were telling me to leave the house, one day the family locked the door and beat me badly and cracked open my head. I was quick to get out the door and the neighbors held the family while I escaped. I was hiding in another house when the man came and found me and brought me back to his house. They promised not to beat me again and then after 5 days it started more; when neighbors came to hear my screams the house owner beat them also. He threatened to cut me and anyone who wants to help me. I ran many times but always he found me. I was 7 years with this family. One morning very early I started running and never stopped, I went to a village and a grandmother asked

me if I wanted to work in their house. The grandparents were nice to me, but the daughter-in-law beat me. After the grandparents died, the husband also started to beat me.

Thank you, Sunita"

For donations or more information please visit the website

http://www.nepalorphanshome.com/index.asp 

or contact Tamara 

Another Reason to Get Involved

A violent act in India makes headlines around the world

By Erica Higbie

Horrific cases of violence against women happen with disturbing regularity in India but when a 23 year old woman was violently raped on a moving bus in Delhi on December 16^th, it became a call to action. Following her death, thousands of Indians lit candles, held prayer meetings and marched through cities and towns to express their grief and demand stronger protection for women.

Public protests took place in Delhi, where thousands of protesters clashed with security forces. More than 600 organizations demonstrated in Bangalore. Thousands of people silently marched in Kolkata. Protests also occurred on the social networking sites; with users replacing their profile images with a black dot symbol, and tens of thousands have signed an online petition protesting the incident.

These unprecedented protests have continued across India and have motivated the media and police to focus on the rising incidents of rape and sexual harassment in the country. Reported rape cases have increased by roughly 25 percent over the past 6 years. According to UN rape statistics, the number of police-recorded offenses in India in 2007 was 20,737.

The increased media reporting and the protests have created an awakening among women. Until recently, many have believed that women themselves invite trouble by being careless. This type of attitude toward rape is so entrenched that politicians and opinion makers have often suggested that women should not be allowed to go out at night. 

Most rape victims, shamed into silence and disregarded by male-dominated power structures, never go to the authorities to seek justice.

Gandhi, the ruling party chief, has publicly stated that the rape victim's death "deepens our determination to battle the pervasive, the shameful social attitudes and mindset that allow men to rape and molest women and girls with such an impunity." 

Prime Minister Singh said that it was up to all Indians to ensure that the young woman's death will not have been in vain.

Following the rape victim's death, Tamara Chant, FAWCO Rep AWG Paris wrote to EVAWAC to express her solidarity with the women of India:

Through Social Media, I, let my club members know about FAWCO's proactive work for women's human rights at the UN.  My friends also made me aware that after the atrocity of the rape in Delhi, there was an immediate and very strong outcry. My Indian friends, many of them male, joined the Facebook chat against this abhorrent issue in their country.

Despite being far away from home, expats in Dubai were also on the move, saying 'No to Violence against Women'. As I read, I was deeply moved by the anger they felt at what happened to the now passed away victim. Also, they touched on a theme that seems vitally important; the role of the parents in teaching their children respect for women, equality of the sexes, and how wrong it is to abuse. I am a parent and it is my role to teach these things to my children. 

            As the FAWCO representative for the American Women's Group of Paris, I realized that my voice, together with FAWCO's, other women's groups, and my friends, could help this cry from India be heard all the way to governments and the UN. Never has it been clearer that we need to push the USA to sign CEDAW and to support FAWCO's participation in the 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (March 4th-15th, 2013) on the Elimination and Prevention of All Forms of Violence against Women and Girls.

FAWCO Clubs Are Making a Difference

AWC Berlin is supporting V-DAY Berlin 2013, which will include; a Vagina Monologue performance on February 14th, a One Billion Rising dance party, and a flash mob in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

AWC Oslo supports the Oslo Crisis Center for Women by providing Christmas presents for women in the center who are victims of abuse by relatives or partners. The shelter allows these women the time and space needed to make important decisions concerning their future. For more information about AWC's participation please contact

Two reports from the 16 Days Campaign

AAWE Paris, by Sallie Chaballier

Gender violence and gender inequality are neither fun nor festive but they are facts - unpleasant yet urgently important. It was heartening, then, that amidst the flurry of end-of-year festivities, twenty people gathered at AAWE on December 4 to mark AAWE's participation in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. The meeting was planned, in coordination with a number of other FAWCO clubs, to discuss a powerful book on the oppression of women and girls in the developing world,

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

We were fortunate to have with us AAWE members Betsy Damez, a painter who has worked with Ni Putes Ni Soumises who brought four of her powerful portraits of domestic violence victims, and Jill Bourdais, a psychologist who runs a support group for women experiencing abuse. Also interesting was the perspective of Nadira Artyk, born in Uzbekistan, who has founded a charity to educate and mentor girls in Central Asia. The free-flowing discussion ranged from French laws and police attitudes towards domestic violence, to trafficking of women and the relative merits of criminalizing the clients of prostitutes, to the impact on male attitudes of women's economic empowerment, to CEDAW [the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women], which the US has yet to ratify after more than 30 years, and more. Tip of the iceberg indeed!

I urge everyone - AAWE members, their husbands or partners, sons and daughters, friends and acquaintances, EVERYONE - to readHalf the Sky. It is nothing less than a manifesto for gender equality, and a compelling argument for gender equality as a force for peace and progress in the world. The book is neither difficult nor depressing, but inspiring and easily digested. Story by story, woman by woman, it demonstrates the fundamental truth that "women's issues" are actually everyone's issues. There are so many fronts on which progress is needed - girls' education, maternal health, economic empowerment, trafficking of women and girls, changing social and cultural attitudes towards women, to name a few. Yet the scope of these tasks should not discourage us but energize us - women's rights are human rights, and it is to the benefit of all humanity to acknowledge this. The emancipation of women is a motor for economic development, an agent of international security, and a moral imperative.

I hope that the discussion of Half the Sky will be the catalyst for more frequent and varied AAWE events to examine global issues in general and gender issues in particular. Our association was founded to help and support women, and it is simply being true to our mission to extend that support to women worldwide.

North American Connection - West Midlands, by Amy Patrick

We have a fairly small club by FAWCO standards, about 60 members, but 9 made the journey for the discussion. Others within our membership read the book and sent comments but were unable to attend on the day. 

The message really hit home, since most of us live in commuter-belt Birmingham (UK). Malala Yousafzai was taken from her native Pakistan to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham for life-saving treatment after being shot in the head by the Taliban at the same time that we were all reading Half the Sky. We all followed her story on our local BBC station and suddenly these problems didn't seem so far away, especially with the reports of Malala having to be under police protection while in the hospital. Birmingham has one of the highest populations of Muslim and Pakistani immigrants within the UK and there were reports of members of these communities attempting to gain access to Malala's hospital room through false pretenses. It was a reminder that the ignorance resulting in violence against women isn't limited to the developing world; we still have to be vigilant about such teachings and attitudes even in developed countries or Western cultures. Malala has made a remarkable recovery. She and her family have been granted permanent residency in the UK.

Malala's shooting and Half the Sky were eye-openers for the attendees, who immediately decided that we want to do something about the issues addressed in the book. I proposed that we ask our club to start supporting theFAWCO Foundation's NEEED Scholarship in Burkina Fauso, which all of the attendees thought would be a good idea that would directly impact women at risk in that country. We plan to take this up with our board in 2013. We know that the book has been made into a documentary that has already aired on PBS in the US; we are eagerly awaiting its international release so we can schedule a screening.