29 November is the International Day on Women Human Rights Defenders. To mark this event, Take back the tech! and "Violence is Not our Culture" global campaigns call for actions to support the work of women human rights defenders to demand the end of violence against women justified in the name of "culture", "religion" or "tradition". Take back the tech! Declare our culture as free from violence against women! Support the "Violence is Not Our Culture" global campaign!


The ability of women and girls to exercise their freedom of expression is critical to countering the continued dissemination of cultural messages that are used to justify acts of violence against women. This includes the rights of women and girls to freely hold and express their own opinions and beliefs, and to freely seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers (Article 19, UDHR). It also includes the right to freedom of association and assembly (Article 20, UDHR).


Join us on this year's International Day on Women Human Rights Defenders, 29 November, as part of the 16 Days of Activism Calendar, and support the action of Take back the tech! and "Violence is Not our Culture" global campaigns.


Take action! Stop the misuse of culture. Exercise your right to expression, and declare our culture as free from violence against women!


(The featured articles and resources have been selected from a number of materials produced and collected on the right of freedom of expression and acts of violence, sexism and censorship by the GenderIT.orgi over the years. Find more resources on violence against women or communication rights in our archive.)

View, Share, Respond! Every click really counts!

kaca
This year, Take Back The Tech! calls for action to defend our right freedom of expression and information – the basic building blocks for us to be able to come together, organise for change, inform public debate, define culture, build safe spaces and end violence against women. How can we get at least 1 000 views and 1 000 comments from GenderIT.org's partners and readers to support most amazing the Take Back The Tech! video!before 10 December?

Finding a difficult balance: Human rights, law enforcement and cyber violence against women

Mavic Cabrera-…
GenderIT writer Mavic Cabrera-Balleza probed on new analytical frameworks of violence against women taking into account cyber violence and the challenges and dilemmas women activists confront as they struggle to address this relatively new dimension of gender injustice. She spoke with two women activists who are at the forefront of advocacy on violence against women at the national and international levels - Lesley Ann Foster, founder and Executive Director of Masimanye Women’s Support Network in South Africa and Charlotte Bunch, founder and Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA.

Democratic Republic of Congo: Letter from the world capital of rape

coordon
Francoise Mukuku reports from the world march of women against sexual violence that took place in October 2010 in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Special Rapporteur of the United Nations has named the Democratic Republic of Congo the "rape capital of the world," with 15,000 women raped in DRC only during last year. In her blog, Francoise also shares how information and communication technologies have helped to increase survivors' voices

Tools for Communication Rights in Malaysia

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Jac sm Kee speaks with one of the most vocal media and communication rights advocates in Malaysia, Sonia Randhawa, through an online messenger platform about motivations, communication technologies, rights, democracy, tactics and gender. Sonia currently sits as the Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ). Apart from conducting regular trainings on independent media and communications strategies, CIJ is also developing community radio programmes that innovatively combine “old” and “new” technologies – radio and the internet – through Radiq Radio.

‘Does your mother know?’ Agency, risk and morality in the online lives of young women in Mumbai

ManjimaBhattacharjya & itsallmaya
Manjima Bhattacharjya and Maya Ganesh, the India partner of the APC's EroTICs Project, open their input with the evocative lyrics of a Swedish pop group ABBA: “And I can chat with you baby / Flirt a little, maybe / But does your mother know that you’re out ?” This article is about middle-class women digital natives in Mumbai, the city with the highest internet use in India, and the initial impressions of their online lives as drawn from interviews and survey data gathered for the ongoing EroTICs research project.

How to look at censorship with a gender lens

HeikeJensen & analia
Heike Jensen and Sonia Randhawa, APC WRP members participating in a gender team of the OpenNet Initiative in Asia (ONI-Asia), talk about how censorship and gender interrelate. Since 2006, APC WRP has taken a closer look at internet censorship and surveillance practices from a gender perspective in order to develop a gender research framework for examining freedom of expression, security and privacy for ONI project partners in Asia, as well as future research initiatives that are looking into the area of content regulation. ONI-Asia is part of a larger OpenNet Initiative, a collaborative project that aims to investigate, expose and analyse internet filtering and surveillance practices.
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