16 Days of Activism 2020

16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is an international campaign to challenge violence against women and girls. The campaign runs every year from 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to 10 December, Human Rights Day.

For 16 Days of Activism 2020, DefendDefenders collaborated with AfricanDefenders, Encrypt Uganda, Women of Uganda Network, Digital Literacy Initiative, and Digital Human Rights Lab. For 16 days, we shared stories of victims of online gender-based violence (GBV) on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram under the hashtag #SayNoToOnlineGBV. On the final day, we shared interviews with Women Human Rights Defenders fighting online GBV (see campaign contents below).

In a policy paper, written in the context of this campaign, we assessed women’s safety in the digital space in Uganda and made recommendations to the Ugandan government, to international actors, and to civil society.

We ended our campaign on 10 December, Human Rights Day, with a digital safety workshop for victims of online GBV in Kampala, Uganda, to increase the offline impact of the campaign.

Online campaign

Interviews with stakeholders

Non-consensual intimate images

Cyber bullying

Online sexual harassment

Doxing

Cyber stalking

Impersonation

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Human Rights Defender of the month: Veronica Almedom

Veronica Almedom is a poster child of successful immigration. A duo Eritrean and Swiss citizen, she was born in Italy, and grew up in Switzerland where she permanently resides. Her parents are some of the earliest victims of Eritrea’s cycles of violence. When Eritrea’s war of independence peaked in the early 1980s, they escaped the country as unaccompanied minors, wandering through Sudan, Saudi Arabia, before making the hazard journey across the Mediterranean into Europe. There, they crossed first to Italy, and finally, to Switzerland, where they settled first as refugees, and later, as permanent residents.

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