Bathsheba Okwenje

Violence Against Women: testimonies from around the world.

(Human Rights)

To support  the campaign 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence  and to highlight the fact that violence against women is a human rights violation, I collected 16 personal testimonies from women from around the world who have been subjected to a wide spectrum of violence simply because they are women. A new story was published and shared through social media on each day of the campaign

Link

Role: Concept, producer, writer for UNDP

Back to Women, girls and HIV projects

"My wake-up call came during our fourth year together. He couldn‘t find his wallet at 03.00 am for his liquor run and was convinced I had hidden his vodka supply. He shoved me to the floor, got on top of me and started choking me. Unlike the other times, he didn‘t stop. He said I would be dead by the time the police arrived. I managed to kick him off me, fight back and barricade myself in the bedroom. He eventually found money for vodka."

" I am a sex worker. I was in a relationship for approximately ten years. For those ten years I was beaten, cursed at and shamed. I was continuously demeaned and told that I was a “whore.” I stayed [in the relationship] because I wanted a stable relationship and I had to feed and clothe my children. In the relationship I felt financially secure but in my head I wanted to run away. My daughters started to get upset with me for allowing him to treat me so. One day they confronted him and told him not to touch their mother ever again. It was then that I realized the extent to which the abuse was affecting my children. So I packed them up and sent them to my sister then I waited until he went to work and packed just a few of clothing and I left the house for good and went into a world unknown.”

"One morning, after taking the children to school, my brother-in-law forced me into bed with him and he tried to sexually abuse me. He said that according to custom, at the death of his wife, I would become his wife. Because I was under his control, I had to give into his whims… "

"At age 18, I started using street drugs. Two years ago, I became a member of a drug substitution therapy program. Police treat men and women differently. When the police would come to my home to do illegal searches, they would beat me, blackmail me, and overturn my apartment. During an interrogation they ruptured my kidneys and one of my kidneys failed. I was in treatment for this for a long time. They broke my hand, broke my fingers. Sometimes they would grab my hair and push my face in the snow, holding my head down for a few minutes and then repeating it again and again."

Social Media Campaign

#16Days