International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women: History and significance

Every year November 25 is celebrated to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and this year's theme is “Orange the World: Generation Equality Stands Against Rape“. The day is celebrated to raise awareness among people that women have been and are subject to appalling incidents of rape, domestic violence, human trafficking, slavery etc. This particular day is also celebrated to highlight the intensity, scale of the problems women suffer and to showcase that such incidents remain hidden from the world.

Fight to eradicate violence against women

The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women raises awareness among people through the means of marches, workshops, campaigns where people are about the atrocities that women suffer in different parts of the world. The date for such a historic day is based on the date of three Mirabal sisters (political activists in the Dominican Republic) in 1960. The orders for the assassination was given by Rafael Trujillo. In the year 1981, activists marked November 25 as a day to fight and make people more aware about the violence against women at the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentros (series of conferences that started in the year 1981 to build and develop networks within Latin America and the Caribbean). The date received its official resolution by the United Nations on December 17, 1999.

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Fight for gender equality

In 2014, UN Women executive director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, stated that in the year 1995, a total of 189 governments came together in the city of Beijing and accepted a Platform for Action that outlined major ways to end violence against women on a large scale, empower them and achieve a sense of gender equality on a global scale and added the plan of action still stands strong today. According to the information provided by the Italian Institute of Statistics showcased that more than 49,000 women who had sought help from the anti-violence centres in the year 2017 out of which 64 per cent were mothers, almost all of them minors and 27 per cent of them were foreigners.

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16 Days of Activism

November 25 also marks the start of 16 days of activism which ultimately concludes on December 10 i.e. International Human Rights Day. 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is a campaign on an international level to contest the violence against both women and girls. It starts every year on November 25 and ends on December 10. It was first started in 1991 by the first Women's Global Leadership Institute, held by the Center for Women's Global Leadership at the Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA.

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