Opinion | Violence against women, HIV and Human Rights. By Ana Mansergas # OpinionVP

This weekend is located between two well-known events: that of November 25 and actions against violence against women, and that of December 1, World HIV and AIDS Day. Two ephemeris that reflect realities where Human Rights are violated. For this reason, it is important to continue making these realities visible. Today closes the first edition of a festival that has come to stay, SOCIALMED VALÈNCIA, the Festival on Human Rights of the Mediterranean.

Violence against women

It would be impossible to highlight the winks or the claims that have come to us from all the organizations on the occasion of the 25 N. But I am going to allow myself the license to publish the action that the Valencian oengé One Day Yes has performed on the island of Lamu, in Kenya, with the children of Twashukuru Eco-School. An action that could be one more example or encompass all the other organizations, since regardless of the way of making visible the rejection of violence against women, the important thing is the intention and being able to make it visible.

Therefore the Valencian NGO Coordinator This year they have once again been the loudspeaker of all the Valencian organizations that form it to join in the fight to end all types of violence against women. This year they have joined the worldwide clamor against sexist violence. And it is that in their statement they assure that it is urgent to end the most extreme violence, such as feminicide and sexual violence, but also with the most invisible ones that feed discrimination and inequality. They reiterate that governments must act now.

The pandemic has multiplied the violence suffered by women throughout the world. Before the arrival of the virus, one in three women suffered physical or sexual violence. Since 2020, calls to hotlines in cases of domestic violence have multiplied all over the world.

Women living in poverty, migrant women and girls, those who are in an irregular legal situation or are racialized suffer directly and multiplied multiple violence; many of these women do not even dare to report for fear of not being believed or even being arrested. In some countries, resources used to support women victims of violence have been diverted to alleviate the effects of the pandemic. In many places, the persecution of women activists and human rights defenders is becoming the norm.

This November 25, 2021, the Coordinator of Organizations for Development has demanded an end to violence against women and against girls and adolescents. Framed in the United Nations campaign “Join us to end violence against women”, They broaden their approach to a feminist perspective that integrates all kinds of aggressions. Well, there are all kinds of aggressions, the visible and the invisible.

It is urgent to eradicate the pillars that support this mechanism, the structural elements that justify the aggressions, discrimination, inequalities and obstacles suffered by women, girls and other groups made invisible or considered outside the general norm. A task in which governments have an inescapable responsibility. Just like they have it in working to eliminate any type of discrimination … that’s why we jump from one event to another. From 25N to 1 December.

December 1. World hiv day

Lambda, LGTB + collection for sexual diversity, gender and family, joins one more year to the demands around December 1, World HIV and AIDS Day, to eliminate all kinds of stigma and discrimination towards people with HIV, because it is essential to achieve visibility so as not to regress in rights and social progress .

To end the stigma associated with people with HIV, the first thing is to have up-to-date information about HIV because “many people still do not know that people with HIV in treatment with an undetectable viral load do not transmit HIV,” explains Tina Belando, Psychologist responsible for Lambda’s Sexual Health programs.

As a society, each person has to do their part to end the social stigma suffered by people with HIV.

On the same December 1, at 11 am, the concentration of the Plaza de la Virgen will take place demanding the end of inequalities, the end of HIV and AIDS, the end of pandemics, as well as the development of the Social Pact for Non-Discrimination and Equal Treatment Associated with HIV, together with other entities such as AVACOS-H, CCASCV, ASHECOVA and Àmbit, all grouped in Calcsicova, the Coordinator of HIV and AIDS Associations of the Valencian Community, and the state coordinator CESIDA .

In connection with the December 1 claims, Lambda will present Sergio’s boxes, a collaboration project with locals in Valencia that have visible these boxes with preventive material and information on STI prevention and on resources that may be of interest such as the Orienta service, the LGTBI office of the Generalitat Valenciana.

Mediterranean Human Rights Festival

And to finish, I invite you not to miss the closing of the SOCIALMED festival, the first Mediterranean Human Rights Festival that has taken place these days and has attracted the attention of 25,000 people.

25.000 spectators / s face-to-face and online who have enjoyed the activities of the SOCIALMED VALÈNCIA festival directed by Samuel Sebastián

The festival Captained by the filmmaker Samuel Sebastián with professionals from the sector such as Juanma Chavarrías, Begoña Machancoses and Aurora García, who pays special attention to cinema and artistic creation related to social issues geographically and culturally linked to the Mediterranean Sea. The festival is headquartered in Valencia and celebrates its main event once a year.

I SOCIALMED VALÈNCIA, Festival of Human Rights of the Mediterranean has had the participation of a luxury guest: 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Turkish Orhan Pamuk, who participated in the debate “Arab Springs, 10 years later”.

And it is that the 2021 edition has been dedicated to a reflection on the social movements that shook much of the world, and that had their origin in the so-called Arab Springs, whose expansive wave reached other Mediterranean countries such as Spain in the so-called 15M, and globally through movements like Occupy Wall Street or We Are 99.99%. And special attention has been paid to the 30th anniversary of the start of the wars in Yugoslavia with special programming.

A festival that further enriches our city and that has come to stay.

Next week, more!