Orange has always known to be a powerful color: it stimulates enthusiasm, creativity and symbolises vitality with endurance. It is also said be one of the healing colors.
So what other better color than Orange to show peoples’ solidarity in the fight to end all forms of violence, abuse and discrimination inflicted on millions of women and young girls worldwide in pandemic proportions.
Available country data reveals that up to 70 per cent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime – the majority by husbands, intimate partners or someone they know.
The Global Unite Youth Network, a group of over 40 young activists from around the world working to end gender inequality and violence against women and girls, launched its first action on Wednesday, 25 July: UNiTE Orange Day, under the UN Secretary-General’s campaign UNiTE to End Violence against Women.
The young activists, including myself, decided to raise awareness about the issue of violence against women and girls and bring this pandemic to people’s atention, not only once a year on 25 November (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women), but every month.
The goal was simple: Generate interest and conversations about the issue, and encourage people to start thinking and talking about how to end violence against women and girls.
On the same day, the UNiTE campaign also launched the new UNiTE Ribbon as symbol for preventing and ending violence against women and girls. The mission is to make this symbol universal.
Therefore, through social media campaigns,the Global Unite Youth Network members, including myself, asked men, women, boys and girls, young and old in our countries to wear something orange on 25 July and wear the orange ribbon, together creating a historical global movement.
Following just almost a week of campaigning, on Wednesday, we witnessed the rise of several hundreds of “Orange Warriors” from beyond borders, nationalities and cultures, ready to stand up to violence committed against women and girls.
From Bosnia to Bangladesh, France to Sri Lanka, Thailand to Phillipines, US to Russia, Georgia to India – both young and old alike – joined the campaign, uploading their pictures shining with multiple shades of orange to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
From the Maldives a small butspirited group of individuals also joined the campaign, including my family and close friends, colleagues at Minivan News and staff of UN agencies.
The island nation of 350,000 people gripped by widespread gender-based violence including domestic abuse, harassment and discrimination with every 1 in 3 woman reported to be victim of violence.
UN Women Representative in Maldives Michiyo Yamada said violence affects not only women and girls themselves but everyone in a community and society. We all need to understand the gravity of the issue and show a commitment individually.
“It is very encouraging to see young people taking a lead to advocate to end violence against women and girls, as they are a key agent of change.” Yamada noted.
She added: “We hope everyone will join this campaign and say NO every day to emphasise zero tolerance to VAWG.”
Next Orange Day is scheduled for August 25th. Will you wear orange and Say No?
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