16-Day Global Campaign Fights Gender Violence and Militarism

I hope you've all recovered from your tryptophan comas, because it's time to get back to work. While we were eating, celebrating, and watching my precious Pats stuff the Detroit Lions like a turkey, the Rutger's Center for Women's Global Leadership kicked off their 16 day campaign against gender-based violence. Did you know November 25 was International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women? Yeah, me neither.

Fortunately, we have a few more days to take action, beginning today with International Women Human Rights Defenders Day and culminating on December 10 with International Human Rights Day. The campaign ends on International Human Rights Day to link gender-based violence with human rights and to show that gender-based violence is a violation of human rights.

Across the world, participants will be holding vigils, marches, and other peaceful, nonviolent demonstrations to challenge militarism and end violence against women, strengthen women's leadership to promote peace and realize human rights for all to achieve genuine security. Event organizers are encouraged to add two additional, more locals goals. You can find local and online events at the campaign calendar.

Personally, I never thought much about militarism or the military industrial complex and how it might relate to gender-based violence. The global call to action explains that militarism is a way of looking at the world that influences how we see our families, neighbors, public life, and other people in the world. In essence, it's an ideology of fear that supports the use of violence to settle disputes. Sounds like our health care reform "debate," Republican/Tea Party, Fox "news," and that Alaskan woman with the dancing daughter.

Unsurprisingly, this belief in violence to solve problems trickles down from international disputes into interpersonal relationships. So opposing militarism is about ending violence against women from the global level (rape as a weapon of war) to the individual level (domestic violence). It makes sense. If we accept the rationale that more weapons and more threats make our country safer, we come to accept that more weapons and violent overtones make us personally safer, and the culture of violence perpetuates.

That stops now. It starts with these 16 Days of Action, but it continues through the other 349 days of the year. The calendar above my desk has the following Henry David Thoreau quote for today: "You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might." Sure, there's some irony in a quote about a weapon and a piece about nonviolence, but I'm thinking of the bow and arrow in the context of sports and aiming for the target. We want to put all our might behind our goal, and that includes watching our own language. We're going to work to end militarism at the global level, but we want to prevent it at the individual level, too.

Happy International Women Human Rights Defenders Day, everybody.

Logo photo from CWGL