Ending the violence, but where's the money? ,

Jane Gabriel — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:13:11 +0000

UNSecretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the UN's multi-year campaign ‘UNite to End Violenceagainst Women' today. I'd planned to attend but missed it, so spoke afterwardsto Rugia Abdelqader from Sudan who welcomed the establishment of a mechanism to tackle violenceagainst women, and to Joumana Merhi from Lebanon who said that the campaign wasimportant because it was a qualitative change and meant that the women'smovement had "managed to break through the wall of silence about violenceagainst women". It's taken determination and a great deal of patience by the women working in Unifem ( amongst others) to get this far; when they first talked of violence against women as a public issue in 1995 they met with a wall of resistance. Today the campaign was greeted with real enthusiasm, but no one could tell me how much money was being allocated, so I rang the press office to find out. I was told that they hadn't"referenced that" in the launch and that they'd get back to me when they had foundout how much money was behind the campaign. I'm still waiting to hear back from the press office.The theme of this year's CSW is, after all, finance for women's empowerment and gender equality......

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Ending the violence, but where's the money? ,