16 Days Campaign Highlights: Making IT work for gender justice

Gender Links working with local government councils, local government associations, NGO partners and communities in the SADC region carried out several events aimed at raising awareness, influencing behaviour change and securing high level political commitment to end gender violence during the Sixteen campaign.

The Sixteen Days of Activism is a global campaign that takes place from 25 November to 10 December to raise awareness around gender-based violence. The Sixteen Days of Activism this year coincided with the UN Conference on Climate Change hosted in Durban from 28 November to 9 December 2011.

Apart from Take Back the Night marches, running an opinion and commentary service and other events, GL coordinated cyber dialogues. These are real-time facilitated online chats bringing experts and communities together to share experiences and strategise on ending gender based violence.

Many rich discussions came out of the face-to-face dialogues that preceded each cyber dialogue. Participants discussed a range of topics. One of the key issues that took centre stage is the link between gender violence and climate justice.

The dialogues linked participants with the Gender Links and African Child and Women Feature Service team that was attending COP 17. They provided feeds giving updates on discussions that were taking place at the conference on most of the days. The first half an hour of each dialogue focussed on making the links between gender justice and climate change.

To view the summaries read bottom part end of each edition of the Daily Links e-newspaper
Click here to read more about this year’s 16 days campaign
Click here to view slide show