By Forest Whitaker
November 25, 2015
The UN estimates that 35 percent of women will experience some form of physical or sexual violence in their lifetimes. This is not a problem limited to one culture or country or continent; violence, abuse, and discrimination against girls and women is an international pandemic that impacts the developing and the developed world alike. In Africa, over 3 million girls annually are at risk of experiencing female genital mutilation. At universities in the United States, 1 in 5 female students is sexually assaulted during her time in college.
The incidence of violence against women is especially high during armed conflict. Sexual violence is all too often used as a weapon of war, designed to denigrate and dehumanize the opposition and to tear families and communities apart. Horrifying stories are emerging from the recent civil war in South Sudan, where thousands of girls and women were abducted, raped repeatedly, and forced into marriage as a form of compensation for soldiers.
These acts of violence are abhorrent in and of themselves; they rob victims of the dignity and security that every human being is entitled to. But their consequences extend far beyond the women who are directly victimized by them. When any group of people—especially a group that comprises half the humans on the planet—suffers violence and discrimination at this unacceptable rate, it prevents our societies from being at peace. Violence against women anywhere impacts all of us.
Today, November 25, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It is an occasion for leaders, policymakers, and citizens around the world to recommit ourselves to protecting women and girls around the world—especially those living in areas impacted by conflict—and to creating true gender equality in all of our communities.
I have always seen working toward gender equality as an inextricable part of WPDI’s mission to empower youths to become peace leaders and community builders in parts of the world impacted by conflict. One of the many negative consequences of violence against women is that it often hinders victims’ ability to receive an education and advance their livelihoods. Violence, therefore, perpetuates cycles of gender inequality that make it difficult for girls and women to get ahead. A vital component of WPDI’s work is that we seek to identify an equal number of male and female youth peacemakers to participate in every program that we operate so that girls in these communities know that they are equal members of their society and that they can and must play an active role in leading it.
Our peacemakers are engaging in important work in communities around the world to promote gender equality. In Tijuana, a group of peacemakers is meeting with incarcerated young women to provide skills and knowledge they will use to create lives for themselves when they re-enter society. In Northern Uganda, young women we work with are starting businesses in their communities and inspiring a new generation of female entrepreneurs. In Eastern Equatoria State of South Sudan, WPDI youth are partnering with UN Women, UNESCO, and Ericsson to provide reading and computer classes for women and girls in a country where the female literacy rate is only 25 percent.
On the surface, these actions—providing workplace skills, starting businesses, promoting literacy—might seem only tangentially related to the major problems of violence and abuse facing hundreds of millions of women around the world. But these programs that our peacemakers are running all address the root cause of this serious problem: in every society, in far too many ways, women are still not viewed as equal to men. Taking active steps—even small ones—to empower girls and women in one context can make all the difference in preventing violence and abuse in other contexts.
In this respect, we all can play a role in promoting gender equality and in standing together to oppose violence against women. Even acts as simple as being conscious of the gender biases and stereotypes that exist in our culture and avoiding them in our daily interactions can make an impact.
Today especially, we are reminded that violence against women and gender inequality are not women’s problems—they are human problems, and resolving them requires our collective attention and action.