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	One Billion Women and Girls are Rising by Eve Ensler, Jasmine Whitbread One Billion Rising   One Billion Women and Girls are Rising, by Eve Ensler.   Our mission is to end violence against women and girls.. We have broken taboos, spoken the word "vagina" in 50 languages in 140 countries, called up stories and truths about violence against women, breaking the silence, supported amazing activists across the planet who have created and changed laws. But we have not fulfilled our mission to end violence against women and girls. In fact the UN says that one out of three women on the planet will be beaten or raped in her lifetime. That is one billion women plus. That is simply insane and unacceptable.   So we have to escalate our efforts to break through the patriarchal wall of oppression and denial, to transform the mindset that normalises this violence, to stand with women survivors, applaud their strength, their determination, their energy and power and to summon up the will of the world to finally make violence against women unacceptable.   So less than a year ago, we announced One Billion Rising, a call for the one billion women and all the men who love them to walk out of their jobs, schools, offices, homes on Feb 14, 2013 and strike, rise and dance.   Nothing we have ever done has spread so fast and happened so easily. Our motto was "not branding but expanding": a global action to be determined and carried out locally. Every city, town, village, person would determine what they were rising for - to end FGM, to remember their daughter"s rape, to stop sex slavery, to educate young boys and girls about non-violence sexual relations.   During this year horrific stories of sexual violence broke through the news clutter with headlines reporting Malala Yousafzai shot for demanding girls to be educated in Afghanistan, the death and gang rape of Jyoti Singh in Delhi, the gang rape in Steubenville, Ohio.   All these stories have built the outrage and ignited a fire burning through the world.   One Billion Rising is happening in 205 countries. It is happening where women will risk their lives to dance and where women have never danced before. It is happening in all 7,000 islands of the Philippines and in over 50 cities in Turkey. There are 100 risings in Italy, 135 risings in UK and thousands in North America. We are expecting 25 million to rise in Bangladesh, and it"s hard to imagine the numbers in India but they will be massive.   The diversity of the risings is beyond anything we could have imagined: the carnival queen in Rio de Janeiro, the queen mother of Bhutan, prime ministers of Australia and Croatia, members of the European parliament, lamas, nuns, unions leaders, zumba dancers, classical dancers in Karachi, cast members on Broadway, women in the Andes, women in British Columbia, Iranian teenagers in their bedrooms, thousands of Afghani women dressed in scarves, Filipino domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, people on bridges, in buses, prisons, squares, in stadiums, in churches, theatres.   But what is most remarkable is what One Billion Rising has already accomplished.   It has brought together coalitions of groups and individuals that have never worked together before, galvanised new people and groups and associations and masses of men who were not engaged before but now see violence as their issue – and all of this putting violence against women to the centre of the global discussion.   It has broken taboos and silences everywhere, inspired a radical outpouring of individuals and groups to reveal the world wide system of patriarchy which sustains the violence. One Billion Rising has also shown that violence against women is not a national, tribal, ethnic, religious issue but a global phenomena, and the rising will give survivors the confidence of knowing that violence is not their fault or their country"s fault or their families fault.   Today we express our outrage and joy and our firm global call for a world where women are free and safe and cherished and equal.   * Eve Ensler is an activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.   Everywhere, Forever: End Violence Against Girls by Jasmine Whitbread.   In India, the gruesome attack forced the nation to have an uncomfortable conversation about the deep-rooted discrimination against its women. But this is not an isolated case — sadly, violence is a fact of life for many women and girls across the world.   This week, I’ll be traveling to the Democratic Republic of the Congo where rape has been used as a weapon of war and a tool to terrorize girls and women. But this is not a ”developing world” problem — a United Nations report found that up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime — the majority by husbands, intimate partners or someone they know. That equates to one billion women and girls who will be raped or beaten in their lifetime.   Today, Feb. 14, the One Billion Rising coalition is mobilizing men and women across the world to demand an end to this violence. I’m proud that Save the Children offices around the world will be supporting this day of action and saying enough is enough.   Violence against women begins with violence against girls. In many countries, this begins even before birth — estimates suggest that there are over 100 million “missing women” as a result of gender-selective abortions.   For far too many girls this violence continues through childhood. In its most obvious forms that means millions of girls face being victims of sexual violence, female genital mutilation and forced into early marriages. In the next decade more than 100 million girls are expected to be married before they reach 18. Early marriage increases the likelihood of early pregnancy and that substantially increases a child’s risk of ill-health and even death — babies born to girls in their teens face a 50 percent higher risk of dying before age 1 than babies born to women in their 20s.   But violence comes in less obvious forms, too. Excess female childhood mortality is on the rise in several areas of the world. Globally, there are 107 female child deaths for every 100 deaths among male children. Often because of a lower value that is put on them; girls eat last (and least) in vulnerable households around the world and have less access to healthcare than boys.   What can we do about this? Awareness raising initiatives, such as One Billion Rising, are essential. They help to challenge a culture of impunity and social acceptance that too often means violence is accepted as a fact of life and perpetrators go unpunished. Protection, education and empowerment are also vital. We work in communities with both men and women to ensure the health and well-being of girls and pregnant women and to tackle this discrimination and violence.   I hope that millions of women, men, boys and girls will rise up and join the call against violence. But Feb. 14 must just be the beginning — it is only through a truly global, concerted effort that we can hope to end this violence and discrimination and achieve the change needed to ensure no girl growing up has to live in fear.   * Jasmine Whitbread is CEO of Save the Children International. Visit the related web page
	Poverty is day-to-day violence, no less destructive than war by Ela Bhatt The Elders, SEWA India   When receiving the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, Ela Bhatt re-examined our idea of peace, arguing that equity, local economies and the empowerment of women through work are central to supporting economic freedoms, and therefore peace.   I humbly accept the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development on behalf of the self-employed women of SEWA. This year, SEWA is 40 years old; I turn 80. We are a sisterhood of 17 lakh [1.7 million]. Our journey is long and perhaps endless.   This prize has given honour to all working poor women and their leadership worldwide, who hold peace, disarm violence and reduce poverty with their honest work. And therefore, it gives me deep contentment to be here today. I still hope some day they will hold a central place in our economy.   This peace prize gives us an opportunity to re-examine our ideas of what constitutes peace. Certainly, absence of war is not peace. Peace is what keeps war away, but it is more than that; peace disarms and renders war useless. Peace is a condition enjoyed by a fair and fertile society. Peace is about restoring balance in society; only then is it lasting peace. In my view, restoration and reconstruction of a society are essential and key components of the peace process worldwide.   If we look carefully at our world, we find that where there is unfair distribution of resources, there is unrest. When people cannot enjoy the fruits of their labours fairly, when they are forced off their land and homestead and forest, we have the basis of an unjust society. Where there is violence and conflict, we invariably find poverty. And where there is poverty, we find anger and acute struggles for justice and equity. And we see governments resorting to repression for ensuring ‘law and order’.   I have often stated that poverty is violence. This violence is by consensus of society that lets other human beings go without roti and kapada and makan. Poverty is not God-given. It is a moral collapse of our society. Poverty strips a person of his or her humanity and takes away freedom. Poverty is day-to-day violence, no less destructive than war. Poverty is lack of peace and freedom. In fact, removing poverty is essentially building peace. I know I am not saying anything new. Garibi Hatao to me also meant indeed Shanti Banao. Garibi Hatao is a peace song.   In India, we are proud of our multicultural society. Bahudha is at the heart of what makes us who we are: social diversity, political diversity, religious diversity, biological diversity. But in our rush to modernise let us not forget one of our greatest assets: our economic diversity. In our markets, we have the street vendor, the cart seller, the kiosk owner, the shop owner, and the supermarket owner, all plying their trades at the same time. Let them cater to different strata of society, co-existing and competing in a natural, organic way.   Let our planning include ample room for the millions of small entrepreneurs and self-employed, who cater to the widest strata of society, to flourish and grow. They are the agents of an economic development that reaches the grassroots; they weave the living web of social and economic relationships that will bind our nations together.   Gandhiji talked about swaraj; he talked about economic decentralisation. I would urge us to ensure that six basic primary needs are met from resources within 100 miles around us. I call it the "100 mile principle".   If food, shelter, clothing, primary education, primary healthcare and primary banking are locally produced and consumed, we will have the growth of a new holistic economy, that the world will sit up and take note of. And it is possible in and around India – in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan – women have done it.   Catching up with western economic models will turn us into incompetent followers, not leaders. But if we address the realities of our own countries, we can create a development that makes us leaders of our destiny. Let me make clear, however, that the 100 mile principle is not a recipe for isolation. I am not asking at all that we go back but move forward with heightened awareness about how and where we spend our money and what our work is doing to us and those around us. In fact, technologies can help to share knowledge and ideas across countries.   However, we do need to get away from a world where people grow what they do not eat, and eat what they do not grow; where they have lost control over their basic production and daily consumption; where they have become part of a system whose outcomes are determined by people far away, in a manner not in their interest and outside their control. This awareness is already growing among the younger generation the world over.   In India, we have a running start because our local economies are still alive. Let us give them the respect they deserve by investing in people who survive despite our neglect.   And where do we start? I have faith in women. Women have shown, if we care to observe, that disarmament in the end is not a treaty by two nations to render arms useless, though such treaties are much-needed in this world. In my experience, as I have seen within India and in other countries, women are the key to rebuilding a community.   Why? Focus on women and you will find an ally who wants a stable community. She wants roots for her family. You get a worker, a provider, a caretaker, an educator, a networker, a forger of bonds. I consider thousands of poor working women’s participation and representation an integral part of the peace and development process. Women bring constructive, creative and sustainable solutions to the table.   Also, in my experience, productive work is the thread that weaves a society together. When you have work, you have an incentive to maintain a stable society. You cannot only see the future, but you can plan for the future. You can build assets and invest in the next generation. Life is no longer just about survival.   Work builds peace because work gives people roots, as well as allowing them to flower; it builds communities and it gives meaning and dignity to one’s life. Work restores man’s relationships with himself, with fellow human beings, with the earth and the environment, and with the great spirit that created us all.   Being one of The Elders, I listen to Nelson Mandela, dear Madiba, telling us frequently that “money won’t create success, but the freedom to make it, will.”   True, in Gaza, the men and women said to me, "Without work we can neither forgive nor forget, because what have we to look forward to?" In a Sudanese camp, I heard refugees crying for work, not charity. After the earthquake in Kutch, when I visited the area, everywhere I went the women, who had lost everything, said to me, "Ben, have you brought work?"   By work, I do not mean sweatshops and cheap labour in factories that leave a person a slave to yet another kind of exploitation. Treating land and forests and people and even work as a commodity cannot build a fuller human being, nor a holistic society. Such work strips them of the multifunctional, multicultural character of work that fosters a dynamic and organic growth in society.   A woman who tends a small plot of land, grows vegetables, weaves cloth, and provides for the family and the market, while caring for the financial, social, educational and emotional needs of her family is multifunctional worker and the builder of a stable society.   One who labours long hours at a factory where he has no control of his work or his skills, contributes one product to society whose work is ‘measured’ and therefore given greater credence by us, while her work is unaccounted and ignored. It is the GDP at the household level that matters. The use of word ‘domestic’ in GDP should not be overlooked. Peace and development cannot be measured in numbers.   I do hope that one day peace and development will shine on the face of our land and the people, and the world will enjoy the wisdom of my India.   * Ela Bhatt delivered this speech upon accepting the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, on 18 February 2013 in New Delhi.   Self Employed Women’s Association   SEWA was founded in 1972 by Ela Bhatt as a trade union protecting the rights of India"s poor self-employed women workers. It now has more than 1.7 million members across the country. http://www.sewa.org/ http://www.theelders.org/   * Visit the link below to watch an interview with Ela Bhatt on the Breakfast with Unicef Youtube Channel. Visit the related web page
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