International
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Street Roots • Dec 1-7, 2017
Street Roots • Dec 1-7, 2017
EDUCATION, NOT
CONDEMNATION
"We want the f Iris I©
believe In themselves
and believe that they
can have a dream and
that they can real
ize this too, n© matter
what."
Nov. 2 5 th ’s International Day fo r the
E lim ination o f Violence A gainst
Women m arked the start o f a U N .
campaign to raise awareness a n d
combat gender based violence that will
culm inate on Dec. 10, H u m a n Rights
Day. Vocal advocates fo r women's
rights talk about their own experiences
o f surviving gender-based violence.
- BHARTI SINGH CHAUHAN
G IR L S ' R IG H T S A C T IV IS T , IN D IA
Chief at UN Women, agrees. “The 16 Days come as
we experience a global outcry over sexual harassment
and violence. Now it is time for action to end violence
against women,” she says.
BY STELLA PAUL
INTER PRESS SERVICE
ally Mboumien remembers the day she pressed a
steaming hot stone against her ch est In Bawock,
the rural community of western Cameroon where
she grew up, young girls often had their young,
sprouting breasts flattened with a hot iron or a hammer
or spatulas that had been heated over burning coals.
This was good for the girls because it would keep
them safe from men, she had often heard her elders
say. So one day, when her mother had gone to visit
relatives, an 11-year-old Mboumien overheated a stone
and tried to iron her own breasts.
The stone burnt the delicate skin and tissue, leaving
deep black scars over her breasts. Her waves of pain
were overshadowed with fear. Terrified, the little girl
hid her scars from everyone, including her mother.
“I did what everyone- said was good. But I was only a
victim of ignorance,” says Mboumien - now one of
Catneroon’s most vocal advocates for Sexual and
Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) for girls and
young women.
According to the United Nations, breast ironing or
breast flattening affects 3.8 million women around the
world, including in Cameroon, Benin, Ivory Coast,
Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Togo, Zimbabwe and
Guinea-Conakry. It is also one of the five most under
reported crimes relating to gender-based violence. ,
Although it is done in an attempt to delay puberty
and safeguard the girl from unwanted sexual desire,
breast ironing exposes girls to numerous health
problems such as infections, cysts, permanent damage
of the tissue, cancer and complete disappearance of
one or both breasts. Besides which, it’s an utter
violation of a girl’s sexual and physical rights and
integrity.
Coinciding with U.N. Women’s Orange Campaign -
an initiative that generates public awareness for 16
days of activities against gender-based violence from
Nov. 25 to Dec. 10 - Mboumien, the Founder of
Common Action for Gender Development, a SRHR
Advocacy organization, is planning to hit the road. She ■
will be seen doing what she does best: educating
people in local communities on the sexual and
reproductive rights of girls and women and why it is
crucial for society to abandon any practices that violate
these rights.
Breast ironing is embedded deep into the local
culture which means people believe in their heart that
this is good - and that is what makes it so hard to
eradicate, Mboumien says. “The best way to fight this
is that instead of focusing on one form of violence
Page 9
International
S
Education, not condemnation
Angela, 15, is from Hyderabad, India. H er vision o f a violence-free world would be to live like the merm aid in her painting -free a nd happy.
(breast ironing), we focus on educating people on
SRHR in general.”
Coinciding with the U.N.s Orange Campaign, in the
United States, local chapters of the women’s rights
organization Zonta International have conducted
demonstrations across the country in its 16 Days of
Activism campaign.
Denial of dignity amounts to violence
Thousands of miles away from Mboumien, Bharti
Singh Chauhan, a girls’ rights activist in India’s
Rajasthan state, is also participating in the Orange
Campaign. Her plan: watch a movie.
In a state where almost 40 percent of all girls are
married before 18 years of age and where it is still hard
for girls, especially those from marginalized
communities, to get an education, watching a film is
both a symbolic and an actual move forward. At
Praveenlatha Sansthan, a charity Chauhan founded, she
is empowering over 100 teenage girls to fight the dual
evil of child marriage and illiteracy.
All of the girls come from the most marginalized
families in the city and witness violence in many forms:
child marriage, physical and psychological abuse. The
first casualty of this is their education, as the girls drop
out of school voluntarily or their parents stop sending
them. Chauhan, a fierce advocate for rights to dignity,
helps the girlsgo back to school so that they don’t fall
prey to the vicious cycle of illiteracy, poverty, abuse and
child marriage.
Going out to watch a movie in a theatre is anything
but a trivial matter to these girls. In fact, for them, this
is a day of living free.
“It helps them get out of the four walls within which
they live, it helps them feel freedom, forget the daily
hardship they experience every day and it also helps
them learn something from the movie, especially
because we choose the movies that come with a strong
social message. Finally, sitting there in the same hall
with others help them feel what it is: that they are not
lesser than anyone and that they have the same rights
as anyone else has,” says Chauhan.
The movie the girls will watch this time is Secret
Superstar, an Indian film that tells the story of a
teenager from a Muslim family who strives to be a
rock star but is forbidden by her father to do so.
Defiant, the girl posts her own videos on YouTube,
fulfilling a dream. The girls, feels Chauhan, will
identify with the protagonist of the film as they have
many things in common, especially the social,
communal, economic and cultural struggles.
“We want the girls to believe in themselves and
believe that they can have a dream and that they can
realize this too, no matter w hat”
GBV - a common global evil
Like Mboumien and Chauhan, thousands of other
women - many of them survivors of gender-based
violence - are joining the 16 Days of Orange Campaign
across Africa, Asia, the Americas and elsewhere. From
sexual assaults, beatings, violations of human rights,
violations of health rights, rights to privacy and rights
to choose a partner to the right to say no to unwanted
pregnancies, women activists are taking to the streets,
village halls and city auditoriums to demand an end to
gender-based violence.
Celine Osukwu, who champions the rights of
disabled women in Abuja, Nigeria, shares her plan.
“On 25 November I will be in Ibadan, Nigeria with a
group of women and men. I will raise my voice on
gender-based violence against women and girls with
disabilities. You know December 3rd is the
International Day of Persons with Disabilities, so I will
take this opportunity to direct my talk ‘to leave no one
behind’ and tell people that we must make education
safe for all.”
In Toronto, Canada, 68-year-old school teacher
Tamarack Verall is also feeling excited about
participating in the Orange Campaign. Her plan is to
meet indigenous women and talk about their right to a
violence-free world.
The fact that the campaign has been able to strike a
chord with women across the world also proves that
GBV is not just an academic term, but an ugly reality
that women experience globally, regardless of their
race, religion, culture, age, language and educational
or economic status.
Nanette Braun, Communications and Advocacy
However, activists like Mboumian and Chauhan say
they feel that these 16 days are not the only time to
talk about gender violence. There should be a
sustained effort to eradicate gender-based violence in
all forms.
Chauhan says fighting violence is a 24-hour a day,
365-day a year job, and one must have empathy even
while opposing a social evil. “If I only say child
marriage must end, I am not doing the complete job.
It will stop the girl from getting married early. But to
end the cycle of violence, she must also be sent to a
school, and provided the freedom she needs to pursue
a goal and allowed the dignity she deserves to live a
happy, normal life,” says the activist, who has been
given an award for her work by the office of the
President of India.
Mboumien adds that social campaigns launched by
Western countries often fail to understand the local
history of a violent practice and the ethos attached to
it. This, she feels, limits the campaign’s impacts as
men start viewing women who condemn violence as
rebellious and acting superior to them. Violence, she
says, needs to be understood in its local context. Men
need to be involved. People need to be assured that a
campaign is not trying to rob them of their tradition,
but to save it from becoming a tool that destabilizes
the entire society.
With her favorite slogan “Don’t condemn us,
educate us” Mboumien tries to spread knowledge
about how gender-based violence not only harms a
specific gender but weakens the cultural fabric of the
entire society, preventing it from becoming
progressive.
“I don’t believe in condemnation. Condemning a
community or a people for a cultural practice is not
the right way to rid it. What we need is make people
understand why it is bad, what harm it actually causes
and seek their cooperation to end this harmful
practice,” she says.
Her belief is shared by Nanette Braun: “Prevention
of violence must be a priority, and it must start at a
young age through education. We also need laws to
protect women and services for survivors so they can
overcome the trauma and restart their lives.”
Courtesy o f In ter Press Service / INSP.ngo