Advocacy

On November 25 is celebrated the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, a day to raise awareness and to fight against every form of gender-based violence. For the past 25 years, civil society and governmental organizations have taken this date as the beginning of a 16-day journey to raise awareness of the consequences of violence on millions of women and girls across the world.

Whereas we can see some advance in the path for gender equality and women’s empowerment, gender-based violence persists with alarming occurrence rate. Women, girls, transgender, and women of color are amongst the most affected groups, each of them experiencing different degrees of vulnerability and being exposed to different expressions of gender-based violence.

Help ending this historical and widespread pattern of gender subjugation. Join Dianova as we support the UN Women campaign this year to raise awareness and funds to eliminate violence against women and all forms of gender-based violence. For the next 16 days we will be promoting this message throughout Dianova’s web site and social media outlets.

Follow us and help us spread the word for a safe and free world for all!

According to the World Health Organization, it is estimated that 1 in 3 women have experienced some form of physical, sexual and/or psychological violence in their lives, predominantly committed by an intimate partner. In the US, for instance, the prevalence of domestic violence is 35% higher among African-American women. Moreover, hundreds of millions of girls around the globe have been forced into marriage before their 18^th birthday and millions have been abused as children. Likewise, UN Women alerts that 70% of human trafficking victims are women and that over 200 million women alive have undergone genital mutilations.

In the same line, despite a major gap in specific data, transgender women have been reported to being 1.8 times more likely to experience sexual violence as compared to other survivors and they are also more likely to be discriminated against, and harassed by police. In addition, at the “intersection of racism and transphobia”, the incidence of discrimination and violence committed by the police against transgender people of color is 6 times higher when compared to cases against white cisgender victims.