Campaign Report: May 28 International Day of Action for Women’s Health 2015
May 28 International Day of Action for Women’s Health 2015
Introduction
It can be said with confidence that this year May 28 Campaign was the best in many years. A year ago we set out to reinvigorate the International Day of Action for Women’s Health by re-launching the campaign together with a group of partner organisations committed to promote the Day of Action in their constituencies. The collaborative effort paid off greatly as the number of people reached by this year campaign is unprecedented.
We had activists from 62 countries joining May 28 mobilisations with hundreds participating in the community organized events while around 4 million peoples were reached by social media.
It is noteworthy that local governments in several Latin American countries and in other parts of the world attribute major importance to May 28 International Day of Action for Women’s Health and see the day as opportunity to build women’s health awareness among their communities. This way multiple events were organized by different municipalities in Argentina, Mexico, Spain and India, which included provision of health services and women’s health specific activities in parks and community centers.
The true heroes of May 28 activism are grassroots organisations who mobilized communities in countless events in 25 countries and those who took on the blogosphere and social media, in some cases despite the restrictive environment, following the Campaign’s call to expose Institutional Violence perpetuated by the state institutions.
We thank wholeheartedly our campaign partners, WGNRR members and allies around the world for your solidarity and dedication to make #WomensHealthMatter.
Why is May 28 important?
This International Day of Action for Women’s Health is an opportunity to fight against privatization and commercialization of health services and to advocate for access to quality services as a women’s human right. – Burundian Women in Solidarity for fight against AIDS and Malaria in Burundi (SFBLSP), Burundi
Call for Action: Our Health, Our Rights, Our Lives! End Violence Against Women in ALL its Forms!
In light of the final stages of negotiations around Post-2015 Development Agenda we decided to call attention to the rampantly unaddressed issue of institutional violence. Institutional violence is a form of violence against women experienced by women and girls where they are denied their right to health by the state institutions, are unable to access sexual and reproductive health services or when they suffer degrading treatment in health facilities.
The Call for Action highlighted four examples of institutional violence endured by women across the globe:
– The denial of the right to access safe and legal abortion services, thereby forcing women through restrictive abortion laws to carry to term an unwanted pregnancy, even if it puts their health and life at risk, or even in cases of rape or incest, subjecting them to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, particularly if women are then criminalized and incarcerated;
– Forced or coerced sterilization or abortion, as all too often experienced by women living with HIV, women living with disabilities, individuals of diverse SOGI, among others;
– Obstetric violence, discrimination and denial of medical care to pregnant women, particularly if they are single and/or unmarried, forcing them to go through their pregnancy and/or labour in unsafe and life-threatening conditions;
– The denial of young people’s access to comprehensive SRH services, particularly in the form of denying access to emergency contraception even in cases of rape, thereby subjecting young women and girls to forced teenage pregnancy and exacerbating the violence they already experienced.
The Call for Action endorsed by 177 organisations and 290 individuals worldwide during the campaigning period of May 2015. A letter on behalf of the signatories was delivered to the UN delegates who over the course of the post-2015 development agenda negotiation process have shown support to women’s health issues. The letter drawn on the May 28 Call for Action urged the UN delegates to support over the remaining Post-2015 processes a comprehensive approach to women’s health, accounting for the full spectrum of women and girls’ sexual and reproductive health issues, needs, and rights.
Global participation
This year the Call for Action to end ALL forms of violence against women resonated woth women’s rights activists from 62 countries.
We received reports on 41 grassroots events that took place in 25 countries.
Most of the activism took on the blogosphere and social media with 81 directly reported digital engagements in the form of blogging and social media posts. The actual number of social media engagement is much higher judging by the outreach measured in hashtags usage.
9 organisations developed their own statements on institutional violence that has been published on organizational websites and in digital media.
In the aftermath of the May 28 campaign we were able to gather links to 50 on-line publications in English and Spanish languages. 14 publications on May 28 campaign were on the campaign partners’ websites, 35 in the mainstream media and 1 post was made by the opposition to women’s right.
Collaboration with campaign partners
The success of May 28 campaign is to the large part due to the support of WGNRR allies and partners who committed to support the campaign by promoting the Call for Action among their own constituents and encouraging their affiliates to take action.
For instance Amnesty International, YouAct, Ipas and Youth Coalition published originally produced articles around May 28 reflecting on institutional violence against women on the organizational websites and major SRHR platforms.
Three organisations Ipas – IPPF – CRR jointly launched a petition calling on Ambassodor Power to ensure that #WomensHealthMatters are reflected in the Post-2015 development agenda.
ARROW, ASTRA, Human Rights in Childbirth, WHRDIC, WLUML, Youth Coalition, Amnesty International Asia, Samsara, Young Women’s Leadership Institute, SFBLSP, NACASA, Marie Stops International (MSI), BPAS, YCSRR, Oslo coalition, Central American Women’s Network (CAWN), AWID, Rose Revolution, MenEngage, WOMEN’S UN REPORT NETWORK supported May 28 through social media, on-line sharing of publications and general promotion of the May 28 campaign.
Social Media
Traditionally a major mobilization across all social media was planned on the campaigning day May 28. Tweetathon took place during the mobilization day of May 28 wherein activists took on the twitter across all time zones.
Several hashtags were used to unite the mobilization efforts, which jointly achieved unprecedented reach out.
| # of Mentions of #May28 | Posts: 701 Users: 506 Reach: 4,690,517 |
| #of Mentions of #WomensHealthMatters | Posts: 500 Users: 352 Reach: 640,893 |
| # of Mentions of #InstitutionalViolenc | Post: 148 Users: 74 Reach: 152,406 |
The number of WGNRR followers on Twitter increased from 2,012 to 2,131, while facebook followers grew from 5,838 before the campaign (June 10) to 6,135 after the campaign (June 5).
Website
May 28 website (www.may28.org) is the main communication tool for the campaign where all relevant materials are published and campaign actions are reflected. Predictably the traffic to the website spiked during the campaigning period and towards the May 28 D-Day reaching 3335 active individual users, while most popular campaign materials were downloaded 1800 times.
Annex 1 – Overview global events May-28_annex-1-events.xlsx
Annex 2 – Social media report MAY28-2015-Social-Media-Report-annex-2.pdf
Annex 3 – List of on-line landings May-28-2015-Internet-Landings-annex-31.pdf