More than 169 countries worldwide will rise up and dance today for the V-Day‘s campaign “One Billion Rising for Justice”( OBR); a global movement to end violence against women and girls.
The V-Day movement was founded in 1998 by Eve Ensler. Today’s campaign is build upon the energy and momentum that was created on February 14, 2013 when one billion activists in 207 countries and territories came together to rise, strike, and dance, in the biggest mass action in human history, to demand an end to violence against women and girls. Tens of thousands of events took place on the ground and the campaign took over media and social media worldwide for 48 hours, trending in 7 countries – 4 times in the US and UK alone.
As a result, laws were drafted and passed, women were empowered in places of dis-empowerment and grassroots networks of women sprung up worldwide.
This year’s OBR will focus on the issue of justice for all survivors of gender violence, and ending the rampant impunity that prevails globally. One Billion Rising for Justice is a call to women, men, and youth around the world to gather safely outside places where they are entitled to justice – court houses, police stations, government offices, school administration buildings, work places, sites of environmental injustice, military courts, embassies, places of worship, homes, or simply public gathering places where women deserve to feel safe but too often do not.
*The founder of the V-Day, Eve Ensler, author of the “The Vagina Monologues” has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive. Read The Guardian’s article:One Billion Rising: the 2014 campaign to end violence against women by Eve Ensler.
