Ahead of Human Rights Day, ODIHR Director calls on states to leverage current momentum to address gender-based violence, sexual assault, harassment

VIENNA, 8 December 2017 – Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), called on participating States today to leverage current momentum in addressing gender-based violence in all its forms, including sexual assault and harassment, ahead of International Human Rights Day on 10 December.

“In the last few months, we have witnessed millions of women virtually joining hands in a world-wide act of solidarity demanding justice, inspiring courage and calling for action. The #MeToo campaign has generated an unprecedented impetus to speak up at all times about sexual harassment, assault and violence suffered by women all over the world,” Gísladóttir said on the sidelines of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna. “Breaking the silence has become a powerful and rights-affirmative denunciation of tolerance towards violence.”

Noting that, as every year, the final day of this year’s 16 Days Campaign of Activism against Gender-Based Violence falls on International Human Rights Day, the ODIHR Director stressed that, while states have the primary responsibility to protect the rights of everyone, acting against gender-based violence is the shared responsibility of all men and women

“Reacting to violence and discrimination against women should become a reflex for all of us, like blinking when you get something in your eye. The message has to be that tolerating sexism on billboards or magazine covers, or accepting sexual harassment as part of the workplace or violence as part of the home, are unacceptable,” she said. “States, for their part, need to act swiftly to condemn and prosecute all forms of such violence, to send a clear message of support for victims, and to perpetrators that these acts are crimes.”

The ODIHR Director stressed that all OSCE participating States have committed themselves to preventing and combatting violence against women. She also recalled that Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the United Nations Committee that approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which will celebrate its 70th anniversary next year.

“Security of the person is one of the first rights spelled out in the Universal Declaration, and violence against women, including sexual violence and harassment, is the most basic violation of that right,” Gísladóttir said. “We owe it to Eleanor Roosevelt, to all women, to ensure that the words in the Declaration’s first article – ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’ – become the reality.”