It’s that time of year, time to start planning your actions to raise awareness about street harassment in your community!

April 19-25, 2020, marks our 10th annual International Anti-Street Harassment Week!

We are excited that Safecity and Catcalls of NYC/Chalk Back will be close partners this year.

Join: There are so specific actions required, but our website has suggestions, ideas and even guides if you need them.

Events: Let us know what you’ll plan to do (stopstreetharassment@gmail.com) so we can list it on the events page.

Online: April 21 will be our global day of online action, so be sure to share info online then using #StopStreetHarassment. Sharing a story or suggestion for dealing with harassment are always powerful things to share. We also have sample social media postings (English) and shareable images. Check out the tools page.

Co-Sponsor: If you are with an organization or group that will be participating, reach out and we’ll list you as a participating co-sponsor!

This is always an uplifting, inspiring week as people and groups across the globe come together to speak out against the same problem that plagues our communities. Together our voices are stronger and we can demand change… we can demand safe public spaces for all!

April marked the 9th year of International Anti-Street Harassment Week!  Read the new wrap-up report and view the photos of actions that were taken in over 30 countries!

In 2011, when I decided we needed a dedicated time each year for groups and people across the world to speak out together against street harassment, I didn’t envision how many groups/people that would entail across the next nine years, or that entities like the UN, Oxfam and PLAN International and government agencies would join in. It’s breathtaking.

I also didn’t know how many hundreds of hours I’d spend to run the Week. This is the 9th year that I managed the Week unpaid, while simultaneously working a day job. This year, I also needed to parent a one-year-old with health issues who was about to have his 4th and  5th surgeries, so I couldn’t put as much time into it as I had in prior years (I am typing this at 6 a.m. on a Sunday while he sleeps). Last year, I was two weeks away from giving birth and very sick while overseeing it and so I also did less than in previous years.  The year before that, I unexpectedly was in the midst of an IVF process and had an egg extraction on the last day of the Week — I was RT-ing and sharing people’s actions from the hospital room before I went under anesthesia.

I care about this issue so much that I’ve continued to organize and speak out even when I’ve had to juggle these huge, personal-life issues (and a day job).

Even before the personal challenges of recent years, each year I always feel so exhausted from preparing for and overseeing the Week that I think,  “This is the last year I’m doing it.”

But, then, each year, I feel exhilarated by the amazing actions that have taken place and the solidarity and awareness-raising it inspires. I am in awe by the creativity of groups who are involved and the dedication to the issue exhibited by people worldwide. The positives of the Week have always outweighed the toll it takes on me and my life, so each year, I decide, “Okay, I can oversee it one more time.”

And I do.

This year, I’ve made a new decision. It truly is untenable for me to keep overseeing the Week indefinitely, especially unpaid, so the action in 2020 — which will be the 10th consecutive year of global action — will be the last. Ending International Anti-Street Harassment Week at a decade feels right, and I am so proud of all that we as a community have achieved across that time.

I hope you will mark your calendars for the final year of action – let’s close out the decade of global activism with a splash! Join us from April 19-25, 2020.

Day 6 & 7 of International Anti-Street Harassment Week — the Week is over!

Here’s the updated photo album.

Hollaback! hosted a tweet chat.

Here are some of the actions that took place –>

Afghanistan:

Free Women Writers’ Balkh team took their art exhibition to a high school. They talked about each painting with the students and let them ask questions.

Chile:

OCAC Chile held an awareness event in a park, including coordinating a creative “Scrabble” board.

Croatia:

Hollaback! Croatia hosted a fashion show that shows what victims were wearing when they were harassed.

Guatemala:

OCAC Guatemala held an event to “take back the streets” by bicycle.

India:

Safecity held a sessions of Politalks to discuss street harassment and the role of urban planning in making public spaces more inclusive. They touched upon numerous topics, from the basics of harassment to power dynamics between genders. They “were extremely delighted to have Jeenal Sawla, an expert and seasoned urban planner, who gave amazing insight into the foundations of urban planning and gender inclusive public spaces.”

Indonesia:

Hollaback! Jakarta held a chalking event.

Italy:

Catcalls of Turin did chalking.

Netherlands:

Stop Straat Intimidatie participated in Stop Telling Women to Smile wheat pasting.

Papua New Guinea:

Across the week, UN Women’s Sanap Wantaim Campaign posted testimonials from people about street harassment. Here is one example.

Peru:

On April 13, Paremos el acoso callejero held a roundtable discussion about sexual harassment in public transit and the government’s obligations according to Perú anti-street harassment law.

On April 14, Paremos el acoso callejero held an awareness raising fair organized by “Línea 1 Metro de Lima” in collaboration with PLAN International Peru. They also held a healing circle for victims of sexual harassment in public transit.

 

UK:

Bristol: Catcalls of Bristol did chalking.

London: Catcalls of London held a chalking event.

USA:

Various groups/people did the Stop Telling Women to Smile wheat pasting, from CA to ME, from IL to GA.

California: SSH volunteer Meghna led a chalking outside the Yoga Seed Collective in Sacramento with CALCASA staff and Yoga students.

New York City: Catcalls of NYC did a chalking event.

Washington, DC: Collective Action for Safe Spaces did a wheat pasting event.

Guest Post for International Anti-Street Harassment Week

By Mary Mwangi

Over the years, there have been rampant cases of violence against women and girls (VAWG) on public transport in Africa and other developing regions. On November 17^th2014, Kenya got the world’s attention with the #MyDressMyChoice campaign when thousands of people took to the streets to protest sexual violence against women in the public transport industry after a spate of stripping incidences were filmed and posted online. This protest sparked a movement to challenge gender norms and systems that allow this kind of violence to occur and fundamentally limit women’s freedom of movement and access to public space.

The public minibus transport service providers of Kenya – the matatu industry – provide an affordable transportation option to many people who would otherwise remain immobile. The matatu industry has developed its own unique culture and employs hundreds of thousands of people. This toolkit seeks to maintain what works well about this industry, while providing practical tools and supports that will make it more accessible and safer for women.

The Gender Sensitive Mini-Bus Services and Transport Infrastructure for African Cities Toolkit is designed to provide minimum standard guidelines and practical tools to create safer and more accessible public transportation systems for women in African cities. Specifically, the toolkit gives vital knowledge for improving existing management policies and practices.

This toolkit is a synthesis of primary and secondary information taken from two case studies from Nairobi, Kenya, and a literature review to identify best practices on gender and urban transport applied in cities around the world, with a particular focus on developing cities. Kenyan minibus services (locally referred to as matatus) are organized into informal saving and credit cooperatives organizations, or SACCOs. These public minibus transport services are frequently used by middle and lower-income earners, the majority of who are women, and are notorious for frequent harassment, recklessness and violence.

These case studies, conducted by Flone Initiative in collaboration with UN-Habitat and Prof. Inés Sánchez Madariaga, an expert in Gender and Urban Planning, affiliated with the University of Madrid and a member of UN-Habitat’s Advisory Group on Gender Issues (AGGI), sought to gather information from both commuters and transport industry operators (drivers, conductors and managers) through the execution of a Mobility of Care Study and a Gender Equity Assessment with three selected public minibus transport service providers. These studies were conducted in August – October 2018. Findings from both studies, coupled with best practices, have informed the development of this toolkit.

The toolkit provides public minibus transport providers with:

• Customer feedback tools and sample customer service charter. The report recommends that these tools should provide commuters with clear reporting mechanisms.
• How to achieve environmental sustainability
• Recommendations on how to develop and implement zero-tolerance sexual harassment policies that address concerns for both workers and commuters.
• Recommendations of minibus modifications that support the specific needs of commuters traveling with children, carrying large packages and living with both visible and invisible disabilities.
• How to integrate organizational family-friendly human resource policies such as maternity and paternity leave.

Additionally, the toolkit recommends ways in which policy makers can use these recommendations to develop gender-sensitive legislation which can create safer, more accessible public transportation systems for all road users. It also provides ideas for how civil society actors can support these initiatives.

This is the first version of a toolkit which will guide a multi-year project to be executed by Flone Initiative. The project will seek to support transport organizations in adopting the recommendations made herein. This toolkit will be adapted and amended based on user feedback, impact and learnings.

You can find the toolkit here.

This toolkit was prepared to provide minibus transport organizations, policy makers and civil society actors with practical and concrete tools to create safer public transport systems for African women and other vulnerable commuters.

Mary Mwangi is the program manager at Flone Initiative in Kenya.