The Aurat Foundation is spearheading efforts in Pakistan as part of a global campaign called One Billion Rising (OBR) to end violence against women.
The call for One Billion Rising campaign has been given by the well-known feminist activist, playwright and actor Eve Ensler and it aims to mobilize and bring out one billion people on the streets across the world on 14th February, 2013, to sing, dance and protest, to end violence against women and girls — once and for all.
“The concepts of women as property and honor are so deeply entrenched in the social, political and economic fabric of Pakistan that the society, for the most part, ignores the daily occurrences of women being killed and maimed by their families,” said Mahnaz Rahman, resident director of the Aurat Foundation.
United Nation’s data states that one in three women in the world experience violence. The name One Billion Rising campaign is based on he fact that one billion women are either beaten up, raped or killed in the world for a variety of reasons.
Video: Women crusade
Pakistan, in South Asia, where “honor” killings are known as karo kari, is probably the country where such atrocities are most pervasive.
Honor killings are most prevalent in Balochistan, Sindh and southern Punjab.
Aurat Foundation will be launching the One Billion Rising in Karachi on December 2, 2012 in Karachi. Rahman appealed to journalists to help create awareness about the issues.
Women in Pakistan, especially Hindus and Christians, are most vulnerable to violence. To this day majority of Muslim women in Pakistan have no say when it comes to choosing a spouse and are denied a rightful share in inheritance.
The Biblical teaching that women are born of a “crooked rib” have more followers in the Muslim world than the West.
Sangat, a South Asian Feminist Network, is coordinating the One Billion Rising Campaign in South Asia. The OBR has already been successfully launched in Nepal and Bangladesh and Sangat will be launching the same in Delhi on Nov 24, 2012.
“We feel violence against women is the biggest civil war in the world where a billion people are violated in one way or another,” Rahman said.
Celebrities who have endorsed the One Billion Rising campaign, among others, include Robert Redford, Jane Fonda and Rosario Dawson.
