Change begins with me, you and the community

 16 days of activism,

What did you do when facing a gender based violence? Did you report an event? Was it observed as a normal thing to your community? In African context, especially to my country, Tanzania, women face it, and bad enough the whole community normalize it.

The UN System’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence activities, from 25 November to 10 December, will take place under our 2020 global theme: "Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!", generally, Change begins with everyone, me, you and the community.

Every activist in orange!

In 2020, the Campaign will increase its efforts to amplify the voices of women workers in the informal economy while continuing to call for the ratification of ILO Convention 190 and to end all forms of GBV in private and public spaces.

Awareness then accountability

The awareness has been risen, and all over the world many youths, women at least became aware of so-called Gender based violence, and maybe there are some limits which drive them back to act that way today and every day.

Get to the issue of traditions, there are some actions which are normalized, and they really do lead to the occurrence of gender-based violence in our communities. But awareness, and then accountability. What next after the rising awareness? Everyone should be accountable of what he/she knows. There are always two part, if you stand on neutral side in the matter of gender-based violence, then you are the one who always drives us back to the issue.

The social context of disability and gender is yet another key exposure to GBV in communities. Disabilities and sometimes gender that require dependency on others for support are exploited by perpetrators, who can whether be parents, teachers, top leaders, to exercise power and control, which increases vulnerability to GBV. 

Lets forget about traditions and so many local factors, but what about technology which we always wanted for boosting development, unfortunately, it is what cause gender based violence to many women. Digital space is not safe for women and young girls, gladly seeing and engaging to the initiatives which fight against gender based violence in digital space.

A study in the US show that women with functional limitations and in need of assistance with daily activities report emotional, sexual and physical abuse from family and non-family paid workers . The risk to violence also appears to differ by type of disability. People with mental disabilities are at increased risk to GBV because perpetrators regard them as ‘easy targets’. Although PWDs were more likely to be victims of violence than those without disabilities, those with disabilities associated with mental illnesses were at nearly four times higher risk of experiencing violence.

Do the challenges or functional limitations pave the way to Gender based violence, we all humans, and absolutely everyone gets challenges sometimes, but they should not be the reasons for gender-based violence to women or people with disabilities.

A call!!

The government, Non-government organization will not succeed if this initiative won’t start at individual level. Their efforts depend on us, individuals. Are you accountable?

In your position, are you playing your role to ensure that GBV is getting over. The initiative should start at individual level, changes begins with me, Mabadiliko yanaanza na mimi!, (Mabadiliko yananza na mimi, wewe na yule). Once a brother, sister, mother, father, uncle and aunt start to fight against GBV then the whole community will be engaging in initiative.