Gender-based Violence

Through sustained feminist advocacy, the ECOWAS Court reframed female genital mutilation as torture and compelled Sierra Leone to legislate against it — setting a regional precedent for women’s rights protection in Africa.

After the coup in Myanmar, the military junta has conscripted men as soldiers. Trapped between militarized power and unseen oppression, men struggle with trauma, fail their traditional provider roles, and are forced to replicate the unjustness they once resisted.

Domestic violence and hegemonic masuclinity are deeply entwined in China – they reinforce and stabilize each other, to the detriment of women. Our author pleads for an alternative thinking about masculinity in general – drawn from pre-modern concepts and Bruce Lee.

Rigid gender norms in Cambodia continue to reinforce a version of masculinity that tends to stifle progress toward gender equality. These outdated norms harm both women and men, fueling gender-based violence, and stigmatizing nonconformity.

“The main achievement of Safecity is that we managed to make the violence visible [...]. The second achievement is that we made the data available, so that individuals and communities can use them - to advocate for their own safety, to demand for a better infrastructure or better institutional accountability.”

One of the main reasons women choose not to run for political office: They fear their safety inside and outside social networks, as well as attacks from the opposition and from within their own ranks.

War and armed conflict almost always go hand in hand with sexual violence – rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage. On occasions when it seems pertinent, such as in the context of the current war in Ukraine, politicians and the media talk about the issue and condemn the violence, but their rhetoric is short on substance.

The elimination of violence against women is tied to the elimination of all forms of heteropatriarchal, homo- and transphobic, (neo-)colonial, racist, capitalist, ableist violence.