The UKPAC's Flagship Project

  

 

 

There are five areas of concern under the UKPAC's umbrella Violence Against Women project:

1. Trafficking and the Sex Trade [see News section for lastest information on the Met's Anti-Trafficking Unit closure]
2. Forced Marriages and 'honour' killings
3. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
4. Elder Abuse
5. Domestic Violence [see section at foot of page regarding the Association of Police Officers' review]

By clicking on the above links, or at the foot of this page, where you'll see see subpages, you will be taken to dedicated pages for each area of concern (plus a sixth for the United Nations). Do visit these pages often, as they are being continually updated.

 

Clubs' and Regions' questionnaire

We need your help! We are asking all clubs and Regions in the UK to complete a very short questionnaire and return it to us (via your Regional Programme Action Committee chairmen, by the end of February. The results will be collated and we will then produce a flyer, which will be circulated to various organisations, and can also be downloaded from this website.

 

Matrix of Soroptimist work

The UKPAC has recently completed the most detailed analysis it has ever undertaken of the work being done around the UK on the subject of Violence Against Women. The outcome of this analysis is a detailed Matrix of the five aspects of VAW, Region by Region and club by club of work, across the country; from Easter Ross, our most northerly club in the Scotland North Region, to Jersey, in the South West and Channel Islands Region. To view this document (it is a PDF so will download quickly), please click here. 

 

Go to the sub pages 

Within the sub-headings at the foot of the page you will find information on current events. For example, on 2 July the government's Forced Marriage Unit released figures that show a marked increase in the number of people willing to come forward to seek protection from forced marriages. Already this year the Unit has received 770 calls or emails. For the full story and to download a PDF of that report, click the link.

Foreign Office minister, Gillian Merron, visited Pakistan at the end of February and you can read a transcript of her speech on forced marriages by following the link to the Home and Foreign Office. And The Times, on 16 March, published an article on FGM and there is a link to that article.

 

The Map of Gaps

The Map of Gaps is a unique campaign by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the End Violence Against Women coalition which maps services for women who have experienced violence.

The two organisations worked together to map services that work primarily on violence against women and provide significant support to female victims/survivors. This includes voluntary sector services, such as Rape Crisis Centres and domestic violence refuges, as well as statutory services such as Specialist Domestic Violence Courts and Sexual Assault Referral Centres.

The geographic plotting was carried out by geographers in the Cities Institute of London Metropolitan University, with services located within local authority boundaries.

The Map of Gaps covers all the local administrative categories of District Authorities and Unitary Authorities. The full report of the findings is 80-pages long and can be accessed at this link. There is also an executive summary of 8-pages. Both these documents are in PDF format so will download quickly.

Also on the website is an interactive map showing the provision, region by region, of services across the UK.

 

NEWS

Ban Ki-moon launches UNiTE Network of Men Leaders
 

On 24 November, 2009, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon marked the 10th anniversary of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women by launching a Network of Men Leaders, a major new initiative bringing together current and former politicians, activists, religious and community figures to combat the global pandemic.

He said it was unacceptable that as many as 70% of women would experience some form of physical or sexual violence from men - mostly from their husbands, intimate partners, or someone they knew, during their lives. Men must teach each other that real men do not violate or oppress women - and that a woman's place is not just in the home or in the fields but in schools, offices and boardrooms.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel Peace Laureate, said: "You are a weak man if you use your physical superiority to assault and brutalise women. I will continue fighting until the end of my days for the right of women and girls to live a life free from violence and abuse."

The Secretary-General said, “As I launch this Network, I call on men and boys everywhere to join us. Break the silence. When you witness violence against women and girls, do not sit back. Act. Advocate. Unite to change the practices and attitudes that incite, perpetrate and condone this violence. Violence against women and girls will not be eradicated until all of us – men and boys – refuse to tolerate it.”

Each member of the Network, part of the “UNiTE to End Violence against Women” campaign that Ban Ki-moon launched last year, will work to support the longstanding efforts of women and civil society organisations worldwide to end violence, undertaking actions from raising public awareness to advocating for adequate laws.

The Secretary-General continued, "Everyone can do something. For my part, I commit to doing everything in my power to ensure the success of this fight. Within and outside the United Nations, I will continue to use my Campaign to highlight the issues. Create partnerships with women to end this violence. As I launch this Network, I call on men and boys everywhere to join us.

"Violence against women and girls will not be eradicated until all of us – men and boys - refuse to tolerate it. Together let us make that pledge."

 

Cadbury goes Traffik free

Cadbury's have announced that, by the end of the summer, their Dairy Milk bars will be fairtrade, and they are now looking to adopt the policy across their entire product range.

Two years ago STOP THE TRAFFIK met with Cadbury in an attempt to get them to take responsibility for the chocolate they sold and ensure it was traffik-free. At the time Cadbury said it was impossible and impracticable, a decision they have decided to overturn.

STOP THE TRAFFIK said, "This is a victory for every person who has complained, campaigned and spread the message. But most of all, it is a victory for every child held in exploitative labour on West African cocoa farms. It is important to remember though that all exploited children will not be free until Mars, Nestle, Lindt, Hershey and all the others have put human rights before profit and make similar announcements."

 

Violence against Women - the consequences of armed conflict

An extract of a paper produced by Kay Richmond, the UKPAC's liaison with Landmine Action and the Cluster Munitions Coalition

Although violence against women (VAW) is well recognised in many settings, that in time of armed conflict tends to concentrate on rape. Women’s bodies have become part of the battleground for those who use terror as a tactic of war — they are raped, abducted, humiliated and made to undergo forced pregnancy, sexual abuse and slavery. UNIFEM claims that 70% of the casualties in some recent conflicts were non-combatants - most of them women and children. 

Due to the greater military efficiency of weapons there is an inherent and increased potential for injuring civilians. This means that for a country recovering from war, the presence of mines causes a serious environmental, social, and economic burden, and for the victims, continued tragedy not only for their families but also the whole country for many years.

UKPAC and the SIGBI Federation have been lobbying for the Cluster Munitions Convention, signed by the UK Government on 3 December 2008, but our work has not finished. Our Government has not ratified it due to insufficient time in the current legislative programme but has told the CMC (Cluster Munitions Coalition) that they will do so later this year or early next year. Despite 96 States Parties signing the declaration only 5 have ratified it so far - Sierra Leone, Ireland, Norway, Lao DPR and the Holy See. Thirty ratifications are required before it can come into force.

 

If you would like to read the full report, click here

 

UNIFEM

Update: UNIFEM's Say NO to Violence Against Women The first, year-long phase of this campaign concluded on 25 November 2008, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, when signatures, collected world-wide, were presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a ceremony at the ECOSOC chambers of UN Headquarters.

The petition was a broad-based call for governments to take action to end violence against women and girls.

There is still an opportunity to add your name to those people who have already signed the petition. Click on the petition - it only takes a few seconds.

Violence against women is often ignored and rarely punished. Women and girls suffer disproportionately from violence - both in peace and in war, at the hands of the state, the community and the family.

THE THOUGHTS BEHIND THE UKPAC'S FLAGSHIP PROJECT

We all work on a multitude of projects. Every year our clubs work on new Programme Action topics but sometimes this work can be random or uncoordinated. Every four years we have a new Programme Focus, and the emphasis changes again.

We on the UKPAC felt that we wanted to engage with a specific area of Programme Action work and continue with it for the foreseeable future.

The Committee agreed that it should be on the theme of violence against women; this would incorporate many areas, such as trafficking, domestic violence, FGM etc. As we do not feel that this subject will ever go away, it is intended that we will continue to work on this project on a permanent basis. We say “continue”, as many clubs are, or have been, already working on aspects of this for years. It is just that the UKPAC will now have an umbrella project, under which all this work will fall.

All your own work!

Let's be clear - we will not be taking any credit for club or Regional work that has been or will be done! The plan is to bring disparate themes of Programme Action together so that we all work for the same goal; bringing it under one roof as it were. To echo Past Federation President, Janet Garnons-Williams' theme for her year, Together We are Strong.

The UKPAC has direct access to government ministers and other influential people, and has representatives on a number of outside organisations; to be able to speak with one national voice on matters concerning violence against women is far more effective than many single voices.

This page will be dedicated to the work that is being done around the country on the subject, in the hope that a coordinated effort will produce results. Armed with the information we will lobby and draw media attention to the problems of violence that women face in the UK. And we intend producing literature and offering help and guidance for clubs and Regions.

For example, FGM (which, regrettably, happens all too often in this country, not just 'abroad') has been illegal in the UK for a decade but, incredibly, not one single prosecution has been made to date. Why? The practice certainly goes on here. This is an area in which we could lobby and question the government on its record. SI Tenby received a much deserved Good Practice Award from the Federation at the conference in Harrogate in November 2007 for the splendid work they have done, and continue to do in this field.

And there are clubs, right across the country, that have been doing sterling work - often in isolation - on trafficking or domestic violence. Pulling all these threads together will give us far more muscle.

Working with outside organisations

Representing the membership of the British Isles as it does, the UKPAC is in a strong position to work in concert with outside organisations to increase the impact of our campaigns.