For several years in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as in the rest of the world, the Orange Day has been celebrated every 25th of the month as a date for raising awareness and preventing violence against women and girls and sending messages of support to victims.
According to a survey conducted by the BiH Gender Equality Agency together with the OSCE, every second woman over the age of 15 in BiH has experienced some form of violence. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 virus pandemic, in the first 7 months of 2020, there has been a sharp increase in the number of applications for admission to safe houses. Comparing the figures from 2019 (347 victims) and 2020 (519 victims), in the first seven months the number of admissions to safe houses in 2020 increased by 50%. The number of calls to SOS lines increased from 2,833 to 4,158, an increase of 47%.
Due to various cultural reasons, fear, economic dependence on the perpetrator and stigma, women and girls still find it difficult to decide to report violence, especially domestic violence, and they report it when the violence becomes very pronounced and unbearable.
Recently, we have witnessed shocking stories bravely told by women and girls who have survived sexual violence and broken the silence and launched a discussion on a regional scale on the topic of gender-based violence. Therefore, it is necessary that BiH society and institutions recognize and react to violence, and spread awareness of the importance of celebrating Orange Day, thus expressing their social responsibility.
In view of all the above, the Institute for Youth Development KULT invites you to join the #OrangeChallenge on the occasion of the Orange Day in June 2022, in order to send a clear message of support and encouragement to women and girls victims of violence and draw attention to the scope and importance of solving this problem.
Participation in the initiative means that your employees, activists and/or volunteers will plant flowers and make an orange flower garden in your garden on June 24 or 25 as a sign of solidarity with women and girls victims of violence. As the initiative is conceived as a #OrangeChallenge, after your planting action you can invite and challenge your partners, organizations, associations, government institutions or informal groups with which you have worked to join in the same way to prevent violence against women. Each new team of participants will challenge others, a new team to join the challenge.
Detailed instructions and accompanying promotional material will be provided to all participants in the initiative, and if necessary, flower seedlings.
We hope that you will recognize the importance of this initiative and respond to the call, and with your participation together with us provide support to victims at a time when we need to be more active than ever in preventing violence.
Don’t forget – initiatives like this one can encourage the victim to get out of violence and change her life.
Please confirm your participation in the initiative by Friday, June 17, 2022, by 12:00, by e-mail: dunja.skaljo@kultbih.org or by calling the phone number: 033/778-768.
Source: mreza-mira.net
