WE CAN End All Violence Against Women

As the world marked The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25^th November and ushered in the annual 16 days of activism against gender violence last year, I found myself reminiscing and reflecting over my various interactions towards a society free of violence against women…a society that upholds women rights….a society that cherishes gender equality and social justice… The We Can End ALL Violence against Women campaign and movement, popularly dubbed WE CAN is one particular interaction that has so far made an indelible mark. So much that it continues to shape my ideological and practical perspectives on matters violence against women, women rights, gender equality and generally social justice.

Beyond the seemingly very aspirational goal, WE CAN message was neither new nor any different from what I was accustomed to. The uniqueness lay in the ‘out of the box without necessarily leaving the box’ approach, the packaging, the delivery, the innovation…WE CAN was unorthodox, free of your usual rights activism/NGO jargon and way of doing things, yet refreshingly simple, practical, inclusive and engaging. WE CAN amazingly and ‘effortlessly’ took the message home with amazing results to boot! I still marvel at the impact more than five years after the campaign went ‘cold’ in Kenya.  

WE CAN was based on feminist analysis and human rights frameworks. It acknowledged patriarchy as the root cause of violence against women and rights based approach as only legitimate framework to address women rights and priorities. It espoused violence against women as violation of women’s basic rights and women as equally entitled to equal rights, dignity, respect, freedom and safety in society. However, Rather than the ‘usual’ reactive approach it took a proactive approach. It was devoid of the often divisive feminist language, argumentation and ethos of militant rights activism, reference to standardized theoretical ideologies underlying violence against women and hard-hitting anti-patriarchy rhetoric. Instead, it focused on two very basic, subtle yet clear and hard hitting messages, that, ‘women are no less valuable than men’ and ‘violence against women is unacceptable’.

WE CAN offered a new way of calling a spade a spade without calling it a spade. While it subscribed to the widely accepted and official UN definition of violence against women (“any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or mental 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 chose to make reference to ‘violence against women’ instead of politically correct ‘gender based violence’ and to define the former as a unique subset of the latter that requires specific response. Rather than make reference to extreme and vile forms of violence it referred to the level of everyday violence and manifestations of inequity to simplify the complexities of violence against women and trigger recognition of the various aspects of the violence.

WE CAN recognized that many forms of violence against women are intertwined with cultural, ideological and/or religious identities. However, rather than engage in blame games and or ‘sterile theoretical debates’ which only ‘tend to invoke strongly protective instincts’, it focused on peoples lived experiences of violence to demonstrate that the violence affects everyone. Rather than depict women as powerless victims and name and shame men as perpetrators, women were presented as powerful masters of their destiny and men as capable of ending violence against women.  

WE CAN strategically focused on domestic violence. The underlying rationale was that most forms of violence against women happen within the home and/or intimate relationships, many forms of the violence are accepted, tolerated and justified by society and subsequently are ‘unseen’ and viewed as inevitable, normal and a reality of life. When homes ‘normalize’ violence it becomes ‘normal’ in families, communities and the society. Women will never be equal in their public lives until they are equal in their homes and families.

All in all, WE CAN was premised on individual and collective capacity and responsibility to prevent and end violence against women. The overarching message was clear…

If we really want to end violence against women WE CAN........

We must choose to raise our voices to oppose violence against women.

We must choose not to split hairs about violence against women

We must take notice of and speak out about all forms of violence against women

Our voices and actions together have POWER to prevent and end violence against women!

 WE CAN made it possible to imagine and believe that a world where relationships between women and men are based on mutual respect, non-violence and equality and women and men enjoy equal rights  is possible! WE CAN surely choose to package our messages and deliver them in a manner that gets them home!