This week, AWAVA joined the five other Commonwealth-funded National Women’s Alliances at the joint annual forum. Discussions focused on achievements and challenges during the first three years and future plans for the Alliances individually and collectively.
Margaret Augerinos, an Executive Member of our Advisory Group, also represented AWAVA’s CSW57 delegation in a panel discussion chaired by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick. This formed part of a high-profile event at Parliament House in Canberra for the launch, by the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull MP, of the Parliamentary Group of Population and Development’s “One in Three” campaign.
Around the country
- St Vincent de Paul’s CEO Sleepout for Homelessness on Thursday 20 June was a timely reminder of gendered nature of homelessness, especially the intersection between women who are homeless/sleeping rough and their experience of domestic and family violence
- Clementine Ford delivered a powerful analysis on the short-sighted destructiveness of victim-blaming in this response to the sentencing of Jill Meagher’s killer
Around the world
- Minister Collins this week led the Australian delegation to Bangladesh for the 10th Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting, and highlighted that Australia has a strong role to play internationally in preventing gender-based violence and advancing gender equality
- The World Health Organisation (WHO) released a new report on partner and non-partner violence finding that gendered violence is a “global health problem of epidemic proportions”
- Read up on AWAVA Chairperson Julie Oberin’s speech at the UK & Ireland’s Feminist and Women’s Studies Biennial Conference on Feminist Advocacy and Policy Work here
- Italy became the 25th member state of the Council of Europe to ratify a convention adressing violence against women
- At a joint conference consolidating the positions of the World Bank and OxFam International on violence against women, the CEO of Oxfam India said “achieving the Millenium Development Goals is not possible if we overlook violence against women…we do not address this like poverty, although the same number of women, a billion, are suffering from violence around the world.”
- Criticism of the culture of bystander complicity surrounding violence against women continues with this piece written in response to the Nigella Lawson incident
Reports
- See the full report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) referred to above – “Responding to intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women”
**Articles published do not necessarily reflect the views of AWAVA and are included as items of interest only