Silenced Truth of Sexual Violence Vs Role of International Organisations

We all can't deny the fact that sexual violence of women and children is a great concern in this modern world. On the other hand, we are also living in a conceptualised-culture world.

Women and children have been sexually abused by men just because they might seem weak. Meanwhile, society kept on validating these terrible acts and the victims were told to keep their awful experience silenced all this time. Time might pass by but their traumas stay at the same place.

If society can't even give, at least mental support for the victims, then who will? Well, it is not rare that many of them are brave to open up on anonymous platforms, but is that enough to cure the trauma? Is that enough to punish those sexual predators out there? Opening up to the virtual world anonymously only gives a feeling of relief. Instead, the victims and us, we all need secure communities that can accommodate these silenced truths and do something about it. There must be a bridge for us to walk and break the norms that the victims should stay silent.

Probably we can see volunteers campaigning out there about the awareness of sexual violence of women and children. Webinars, TV shows, posters, social media feeds, and blogs are examples of it. Non-profit organisations have been accommodating these movements. 

One of the great campaigns in Indonesia is the Kampanye Global 16 Hari Anti Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan (16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence). This movement was held by UN Women, Komnas Perempuan and Komnas HAM of Indonesia in 2018. The campaign is international since it was intended to end the violence to women. 

Encouragement to create this #GerakBersama aroused from the low awareness of the society and how the victims have been fighting against the concepts made by the society. The inevitable truth is that the stigma made by society supports the cases to increase from time to time. Imagine these victims were fighting on their own but nobody supported them. We must not be ignorant about the fact that this is still happening. 

The world has actually seen similar campaigns before such as the #MeToo campaign. In there, the survivors of sexual violence were able to share their burdens on social media. Though there are various campaigns, such as #GerakBersama and #MeToo to accommodate victims, it is still not enough. It is great that we have such organisations to raise such awareness. 

However, we also need to be aware that sexual violence does not happen only among adult or teenage women, but as well as children. Such young victims don't even know how to share their stories anonymously. The awareness about children sexual violence is still lacking indeed. 

According to UNICEF, at least 120 million girls under the age of 20 have been victimised to perform sexual acts. We can clearly imagine that the actual data unreported is likely higher than just about 1 out of 10 girls. The rest still stayed silent. 

UNICEF, for example, has been playing their role as an international organisation in preventing and responding to sexual violence among children across the world. The realisation of this is through their programmes, partnerships and advocacy. Not only globally, but they also work with governments at the national level in order to strengthen justice, health, education, and social services.