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. 

They focused on the recovery of child and adolescent survivors. Yet, they are also fighting for the urgency we all think about. Social norms and culture of silence. 

Not to neglect the Covid-19 situation, such sexual violence also exist in digital world. According to Plan International - an international organisation that is fighting for women and children's rights - online abuse is silencing girls. The report across 31 countries shows that more than half of the young women have experienced being sexually harassed online. The effect of this is awful mentally to women due to the trauma it creates. 

Plan International as well revealed that online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSEC) is increasing annually in many Asian countries. 

The proof has shown that the norms created in the society have been forcing children, who experienced sexual violence, not to talk about anything.

The data, movements, programmes, and surveys should be enough to create a concern to the whole world. A concern that the weak become even weaker through the force of society and its old-fashioned norms. We, a part of society, should realise something. Sexual violations is real. The presence of international organisations that could help is factual. 

We are lucky. There are still a lot of international non-profit organisations who care and be concerned about sexual violence: the victims, the justice, the norms and society. These include: UN Women, UNICEF, AWID, Womankind Worldwide, Center for Reproductive Rights, Plan International, Women for Women International, Men Engage Alliance, and others. 

Though they stand for different organisations, they still have one goal in common. Ending violence against women and children. The world can't fight against sexual violence if international organisations like these don't exist. They accommodate since we all dreamed for a better society. We dreamed of a better world.  

What should we do to create a world without sexual violence? The answer is by hearing those survivors around us. We hear and we connect. We support them to help change the thought that society still applies the norms against them. We connect with such international organisations, so that they can perform their role effectively. 

Technology is created for a purpose. We can easily contact those international organisations through the internet. Each one of us could be a part of the better world we dreamed of. 

Time to time, the norms will change. Society could change from one generation to the next. International organisations that worked in this field of violence have stated their programmes. Then, the rest is ours to help. 

Imagine that survivors are brave to open up to us in person, so we connect them with platforms that could help them. Justice will easily be in their hands. 

Speak your opinions up, for the world is ready to hear it.