Campaigning for zero tolerance towards violence against women

The Lebanese Women Democratic Gathering jointly with Najdeh Association launched on September 23 a media campaign to promote ‘zero tolerance for violence against women and girls’. This comes as part of a regional campaign (VAWG) involving 7 Arab countries in the Southern Mediterranean region, namely Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The campaign, which is kicked off under the umbrella of the feminist initiative Euromed and with funding from the EU, seeks to bring violence out of the private sphere by encouraging women and girls to speak out and share experiences of violence through using the hashtag ‘shu qistik’. It basically targets men and women with the aim to shift the blame from the victim to the perpetrator. The campaign gives women a safe platform to have access to information on existing services tailored for victims of violence. It also highlights the challenges in Lebanon including the abolishing of discriminatory personal status laws and the penal code, and advises for the adoption of a civil law, amendment of the bill on domestic violence and the endorsement of a law on harassment in the workplace. (NNA, September 25, 2019)