When women and girls are beaten, coerced into sex or emotionally abused, it doesn’t only hurt them but it hurts society as whole by drastically damaging health, education and other human development indicators and it takes a society to protect women and girls and prevent them from gender based violence. GBV occurs in every part of the world, irrespective of ethnic, racial, socio-economic and religious lines so we can say this is more like a global issue rather than a regional or country specific and requires global collaborative efforts to address it.

It is significant that according to Global Gender Gap Index Report in 2006, the first year of the report Pakistan ranked at 112, and since then, its position has been steadily deteriorating every year and in 2014, Pakistan remained second last at 141 out of 142 countries. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan recorded almost 3,000 cases of violence against women and girls, including murder, sexual assaults, domestic violence and kidnappings in 2016 and 2017

Let’s Create A World Safe for Everyone by contributing to Gender Based Violence Prevention

Ending this global phenomenon requires action from everyone. 16 Days of activism against gender based violence, established by UN since 1999 mark huge success in raising voice for voiceless because it provides global platform for all stakeholders to call attention to urgent and important needs in order to eliminate GBV. The efforts made by civil society organizations under the umbrella of Pakistan Forum for Democratic Policing (PFDP) in collaboration with Volunteer Service Organization (VSO) has been very instrumental by organizing activities of different type and volume which have not only fostered advocating for GBV prevention and legislative reforms but it has generated the dialogues among youth, LGBT community, media, rural community in fact in almost every segment of society that, “My Police For Me”. PFDP planted a seed of trust among communities regarding police that they are our friends and help us in bringing perpetrator to justice.

Every woman and girl in the world has one thing common; their rights. Therefore this momentum most continue 24/7, because the societies where every third woman is subject to physical and emotional violence, people feel honor in honor killing and adolescent girls and women are suppressed and denied from their rights in those societies this unfinished agenda needs more than 16 days of activism. May it be our home, our neighborhood, our village, country or across our border, GBV has no place in any society.

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