The Campaign was launched during the latter stages of the reception and dinner that closed the CAPWIP Global Congress on Women in Politics, with an audience of approximately 280 people including NGO, academic, UNDP, UNFPA, and government representatives. The UNIFEM East and South East Asia Regional Programme Adviser, Lorraine Corner, introduced the Asia-Pacific Campaign on Elimination of Violence Against Women by posing the question, "Why now? Why a campaign on Violence Against Women?". She then explained the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and why UNIFEM was initiating this campaign at this time. She talked about how UNIFEM can contribute to elimination of violence against women by addressing this issue as a gender issue, and advocating mainstreaming of the issue by governments at the policy level.

Lorraine emphasized that the UNIFEM Campaign in Asia-Pacific is an advocacy campaign to raise the awareness of the public and governments on the issueand its impact on women's rights as a whole. She presented the UNIFEM Trust Fund as an example of the way UNIFEM also supports organizations in the Asia-Pacific to implement specific activities to eliminate violence against women.

The UNIFEM Philippines National Committee was introduced to the audience, and Ms. Olga Martel, President of the Philippines National Committee presented a symbolic cheque to Ms. Tanada of WAND.

Ms. Karina David, Executive Director of Harnessing Self-reliant Initiatives and Knowledge (HASIK) then spoke about HASIK’s innovative, community based approach tto eliminating violence against women (CompacVAW). Their vision involves the whole community. She described how, after sensitization workshops for men and women, some of the men formed an informal group that would go around bars in the community and act out a role play to influence the attitudes of other men. She also described a unique intervention strategy for domestic disputes. When neighbours hear a family dispute, everyone would go to that house and throw stones on the roof to let the family know that the community is aware and disapproves. At an opportune moment, they would intervene, the women taking the women aside and the men talking to the man. Others would deal with the children. Karina emphasized the need to see violence against women as a political issue. She described how women candidates in the recent election in the Philippines were successful in putting the issue on the agenda.

The message to the audience was to take action themselves and also demand action of the government.

Nisha Hussein from the Pacific Regional Office and Chandni Joshi from the South Asia Regional Office then described the campaign in their sub-regions. The highlight of the Pacific campaign will be a rally during the 16 days of activism on violence against women. South Asia will also organize a march for recognition of women’s human rights. At the end of her speech, Chandni declared open the UNIFEM Asia-Pacific Campaign on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Traditional Filipino gongs were beaten to symbolize the opening.

The highlight of the ceremony was the dance performance by PETA Women’s Theater Programme; “La Vie En Rose”. This was the first official activity under the Campaign. The dance portrayed women’s fear and suffering from violence, and their struggle to free themselves. A powerful poem accompanying the dance called out to the audience that a women’s body is her own and must not be violated. The climax of the performance was when the dancers started to undo ropes that clung to their necks and bound them. The audience joined in releasing the ropes to save them. As the ropes fell off, the banner reading “A Life Free of Violence: It’s our Right” was unveiled.

Many in the audience were speechless with emotion as the performance ended. The launch was a success.

UNIFEM received many encouraging words from the NGO community and were thanked for the initiative. People were eager to let us know what they were doing to eliminate violence against women. We have suggested that they write to us about their initiatives so that we can join hands under the UNIFEM Campaign through our web site, thus reaching a bigger audience.

Completing the launch was only the beginning. Now that the Campaign has officially started, all eyes are on us to see what we are going to do. The pressure is on.

You might be interested in our Campaign T-shirts. They provided the logo that we are using on our Web site home page during the Camapign, and on many of our Camapign pages.