16 Blogs for 16 Days of Action Against Gender Based Violence

The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an annual international campaign that kicks off on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until 10 December, Human Rights Day. Read more here.

Over the 16 Days Reclaim the Agenda will be sharing Blogs from various groups and researchers on different topics relating to Gender Based Violence. We also have a programme of events, beginning with Reclaim the Night on the 25th November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Despite efforts to tackle gender-based violence, the numbers of domestic incidents reported to the police has risen steadily over the years with more than 33,000 calls out to incidents in 2021/22, the highest on record. Of those, more than 21,000 were recorded as crimes with women accounting for 68% of all victims. Four years after the Gillen Review into serious sexual offences in Northern Ireland, over half of the recommendations have not been implemented.

Even with positive developments including the introduction of new offences such as coercive control, stalking and non-fatal strangulation on the statute books the struggle for justice is not over.

 The current political stalemate means the draft Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy is on hold, and Women’s Aid Federation NI have lost 50% of their funding due to no one being in place to make decisions on budgets. We need our politicians to return to Stormont to tackle this crisis and put resourced responses in place, not just change on paper.

We also urgently need education including on consent and healthy relationships to drive cultural change, as legislation alone will not address gender based violence.