16 Day Campaign for Action Against Violence to Women

November 25, 2006

2006 marks the 16th. Anniversary of the 16 Day Campaign for Action Against Violence to Taxi Heathrow Airport Women. Since 1991, the 16 Day Campaign has fought to make visible violence against women as being a violation of human rights.

This many-sided campaign involves governments, activist women, journalists, United Nations agencies and numerous NGOs in all of Latin America and the Caribbean. Among its purposes are the demanding of support services for survivors, the reinforcing of preventive measures, the exercising of pressure for legal and judicial reforms, and the use of international instruments of human rights to confront violence against women as a violation of human rights, as a crisis situation in public health, and as a threat to human security, development and peace in the whole world.

The 16 Day Campaign in Latin America and the Caribbean has the support of agencies such as the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) among others, and that of various NGOs. 

The days for action are scheduled as follows: November 25 International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. December 1 World Day of the Fight Against AIDS. December 6 Day of Remembrance of the Massacre in Montreal. On December 6, 1989, Marc Lepine shot 14 women to death in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Montreal, because he believed that he had not been accepted into the faculty due to its high number of women students enrolled. December 10 International Day of Human Rights.

The United Nations has already announced funding worth the equivalent of R$8 million, for 28 projects in 20 countries, of programs for supporting and developing actions toward the overcoming of discrimination. Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Paraguay are among the Latin American counties where projects will be supported.

According to women’s organizations specializing in the matter of violence, in the last 16 years there has been much progress in the struggle to eliminate violence against women. Isis, the NGO based in Chile, says that during the 1990’s, by means of a series of international conferences, women’s rights were established as human rights and gender violence became important item on the international agenda. 

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Conference for the Prevention, Sanction and Eradication of Violence Against Women (Belém do Pará Convention, 1994), and ratified by 32 countries of the region, established a legal and political framework for the elimination of gender violence. In 2002, the Organization of American States (OEA in Spanish) adopted the Mechanism for Follow Up of the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI in Spanish), that set out two important elements for the monitoring of the implementation of the Convention’s agreements; the Conference of Participating States and the Committee of Experts. 

On the national level, the majority of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have approved laws against intra-family or domestic violence, and sexual violence, but there is still a long road ahead as is clearly shown by the statistics on victims of violence.