Participants at the CSW opening. Credit: Bomoon Lee/IPS
By Armin Rosen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 (IPS/TerraViva) UNIFEM’S Say No-UNiTE platform is only four months old. But since its launch in November of last year, the anti-violence campaign has served as an example of how the world body can use online social networking to organise activists and civil society workers around the globe.
The “Say No” website allows activists working on gender violence issues to share ideas by posting an “action” online. The action can be viewed and commented upon by other registered users, who can use the website to develop ideas and contacts with activists around the world.
There are over 183,000 online “actions” to date – which gave programme participants a lot to talk about at a Commission on the Status of Women side event organised around the so-far successful UNIFEM initiative.
The event was largely an opportunity for NGOs to share their various projects on targeting violence against women. The conference had no specific geographic focus, since the event’s few listed speakers represented organisations with an international presence and mission.
A crowded conference room in the U.N.’s North Lawn Building hosted speeches from European Parliament Member Eva Svensson, who talked about her work in putting violence against women on the Parliament’s legislative agenda, and Dianne Curtis, head of Zonta International, a global women’s empowerment-focused NGO.
Svensson talked about her organisation’s work in over 60 countries, as well as its support for UNIFEM’s 100-million-dollar fund for anti-violence programmes.
The session’s more open-ended second half included statements from NGOs from all over the world.
A representative from an Iraqi civil society organisation called Al Hakim talked about his group’s attempts at getting religious leaders to talk about the need to end gender violence.
An executive with the Young Women’s Christian Association said that UNIFEM’s fund for combating violence against women had helped sponsor YWCA-organised anti-violence workshops all over the world.
And a young woman from Genderlinks, a U.N.-funded programme that holds online dialogues between women’s rights activists around the world, talked about the effect of social networking technology on women’s activism in southern Africa.
During a week in which practically every major women’s organisation has a representative in New York, Tuesday’s event provided a look at how NGOs and activists could connect the other 51 weeks of the year.
