‘Anyone here been raped and speaks English?’1

1. This title is taken from Behr's (1978) book, listed in the references below.

: workshops for editors and journalists on gender-based violence and sex-trafficking

Abstract

Editors and journalists who have been trained to understand issues of gender-based violence and human rights can have a positive influence on educating public and political understanding of these issues. This article describes two workshops held recently in Senegal and Albania for male and female editors and journalists. The UNFPA workshop for journalists and editors from six African countries in post-conflict situations, held in Senegal, was deliberately scheduled to coincide with the Dakar film festival on gender-based violence. The purpose of the UNFPA strategy was to achieve extensive media coverage in these six countries. The Albanian workshop for local and national media took place in Tirana as part of a three-year project against sex-trafficking, conducted by the NGO Albanian Centre for Population and Development in partnership with the Mediterranean Women's Studies Centre.

Notes

1. This title is taken from Behr's (1978) book, listed in the references below.

2. www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html (last accessed May 2007).

3. www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/ (last accessed May 2007).

4. www.achpr.org/english/_info/women_en.html (last accessed May 2007).

5. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 was passed unanimously on 31 October 2000, and is the first resolution ever passed by the Security Council that specifically addresses the impact of war on women, protection of women in war, and women's contributions to conflict resolution and sustainable peace. www.womenwarpeace.org/toolbox/toolbox.htm (last accessed May 2007).

6. Adopted by the General Assembly in 1993, the declaration defines violence against women as: ‘any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life’. The declaration was key to the recognition that violence against women constitutes an abuse of women's human rights.

7. For instance, the 1993 Declaration outlines steps states and the United Nations, its agencies and programmes, should take to address gender-based violence against women, and at Article 4 makes clear that: ‘States should condemn violence against women and should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination … [States should] exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and, in accordance with national legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by private persons’ www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/A.RES.48.104.En (last accessed May 2007).

8. In case any participants felt they or their colleagues were being sexually harassed, I referred them to an answer I had recently given to a request for online advice for NGO workers experiencing sexual harassment. The request came from Aidworkers Network www.aidworkers.net/?q=node/833#comment-963 (last accessed May 2007). My advice included:

•	Keep a diary of events in case you decide to take some sort of action.
•	Start by telling the man to ‘cease and desist’ or put it in writing to him. (Keep a copy of your dated letter.)
•	Spell out precisely what he is doing.
•	Explain that his behaviour is upsetting you.
•	Try not to be alone with the harasser (this is not always possible).

In the majority of cases when a woman takes this approach and clearly asks the man to stop the offensive behaviour towards her he does stop.

9. To illustrate this, I gave the following example from a speech by the female BBC war correspondent Kate Adie, speaking at the 2000 White Ribbon Day Conference in London, organised by WOMANKIND. She said:

‘It's become one of my habits to seek out the middle-aged woman who has witnessed the action and even though she may well be partisan and committed, her account will invariably be more accurate than the shiny-eyed young fighter, full of his own deeds. I've met this time and again. In Beirut, in Bosnia, in Afghanistan and in Northern Ireland. It's not merely that women are prevented from talking to reporters, so telling the wider world what has really happened. It's that it is an indication that their voices will not be taken seriously in their own society. The danger to the child will rate as nothing in the councils of the fighting men. Women will be seen as having no judgement, no right to opinion, no part of the decision-making process for the future of their society.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lesley Abdela

Lesley Abdela is senior partner in the consultancy Shevolution. She works on gender, media, developing democracy, civil society, and human rights, and has first hand experience of post-conflict reconstruction and peace-building operations. In the past seven years she has worked in Aceh, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Kosovo. She is a professional freelance journalist and broadcaster, and a long-standing member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists