Montreal, 1 November 2008. From November 25 to December 10th, the Women’s International Network of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC-WIN) will highlight the 16 days of activism against gender violence with an Internet campaign to Denounce Gender violence in the media and transform media into a catalyst to end violence against women. The campaign will be broadcast at www.amarc.org/16jours [fr/en]

This years’ international theme of the campaign is « Media and Violence Against Women ». The campaign seeks to denounce gender violence in the media and will cover 3 dimensions: (a) Media as an instrument in combating violence against women. (b) Violence against women as projected in the media which “normalizes” violence; (c) violence committed against women media practitioners. The 16 days campaign starts on November 25th with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women; it continues on November 29th with the International Women’s Human Rights Defenders Day; followed by December 1: World AIDS Day; December 6: Commemoration day of the Montreal (Canada) Massacre in 1989 and ends with the December 10th: International Human rights Day. The campaign will be broadcast at www.amarc.org/16jours

Community radio producers from Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Europe, North America and Latin America and the Caribbean will dedicate these 16 days to highlight the effort of women and men working to put an end to gender violence. The programs featured will include documentaries, interviews, debates, poetry, music and much more. This multilingual broadcast campaign mobilizes community radios around a global issue and encourages them to use new communication technologies such as the Internet to extend the reach of their voices. Radio stations around the globe are invited to download the audio files from the AMARC-WIN 16 days website and broadcast them in their radio stations.

The coordination of the 16 days campaign at the international level will be ensured by the International Secretariat of AMARC, contact Flor Maria Balbin secretariat(at)si(dot)amarc(point)org. Regionally, the campaign will be coordinated by the regional AMARC WIN representatives in conjunction with AMARC regional offices. Asia-Pacific: Bianca Miglioretto a bianca(at)isiswomen(dot)org; West and Central Africa, Zara Yacoub myzara(at)intnet(dot)td; East and Southern Africa, Doreen Rukaria: rukdoreen(at)yahoo(dot)com; Europe, Lucia Ruiz at lucia.ruiz(at)radiovallekas(dot)org; Latin America and the Caribbean, Maru Chavez a mechf(at)hotmail(dot)com ; MENA: Tamara Aqrabawe at aqrabawe(@)yahoo(dot)com(dot)au ; North America Sophie Toupin at sophie(underscore)toupin(at)hotmail(dot)com.

The AMARC Women’s International Network is a large assembly of women communicators working to ensure women’s right to communicate through and within the community radio movement. AMARC is an international non-governmental organization serving the community radio movement, and linking more than 4,000 community radios in over 110 countries. AMARC aims to support, defend and promote the interests of community broadcasters through solidarity and international cooperation. For further info http://www.amarc.org

source: AMARC INDONESIA