10 December, International Human Rights Day, marked the culmination of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence (GBV), an annual global campaign that seeks to raise awareness of violence against women as a human rights violation and demand action to end it.

The campaign kicked off with mass mobilisations on 25 November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Women took to the streets in country after country in Latin America, from Argentina to Mexico, and in Europe, from Portugal to Turkey. Women’s rights advocates and their allies also rallied in some African countries, including in Kenya and South Africa, and in Asia, notably in Indonesia.

Protests were peaceful and the right of assembly was largely respected, with notable exceptions in Turkey, where a planned protest in Istanbul was banned and security forces dispersed those who marched and arrested some, and Kenya, where police used teargas to disperse protesters – both sadly regular police responses to protests.

The United Nations (UN) campaign’s slogan was ‘Every 10 minutes a woman is killed. #NoExcuse. UNiTE to End Violence against Women’, and the campaign featured the launch of a global report on femicide published by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women. On the ground, protesters highlighted femicide figures reported by the UN and national monitoring organisations – often civil society groups that keep count when governments won’t – and demanded action to keep women safe and hold perpetrators accountable.

Depending on the context, civil society’s efforts to denounce femicide were joined by demands focused on legal or workplace discrimination, street harassment, cyberstalking and rape. Civil society is calling for responses from the most immediate – such as panic buttons and safe houses – to the longer-term and more systemic kind of change needed to dismantle the entrenched norms that underpin, legitimise and perpetuate GBV.

Year-long action

The official day of commemoration designated by the UN as the start of the 16-day global campaign provided a useful rallying point for coordinated action to draw attention to GBV. But the mobilisations on 25 November and the campaign that followed were the culmination of a year-long grassroots effort by feminists around the world to denounce gender-based injustice and demand the right of all women to live free from violence.

The first global moment of mobilisation came on 8 March, International Women’s Day, with rallies in countries on every continent, often calling out the multiple forms of gendered violence that perpetuate inequality. This was particularly the case in Mexico, where 180,000 women marched in Mexico City, and many more throughout the country, in outrage at the 800-plus femicides recorded the previous year. Similarly, in Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, women took to the streets in numbers in response to a recent surge of femicides: 32 in the first two months of the year alone.

When they mobilised, whether on 8 March or 25 November, women around the world also expressed their solidarity with those who experience the heightened gendered violence that comes with conflict and those living under oppressive regimes of gender apartheid who are not free to speak out.

Beyond these emblematic dates, the year was punctuated by mobilisations against GBV, often triggered by high-profile cases of femicide which, thanks to years of work by women’s rights organisations, are increasingly recognised not as unavoidable but as egregious human rights violations that must be eradicated.

Kenya’s call to #EndFemicide

In Kenya, January saw a wave of protests under the banner #EndFemicideKE, sparked by a series of femicides that outraged public opinion. Femicide Count Kenya, a civil society group, documented 10 femicides that month alone, and a total of 504 between 2019 and 2024. Other civil society organisations such as the Center for Rights Education and Awareness and the Federation of Women Lawyers played an important role in organising protests and advocacy campaigns.

Over 20,000 people participated in marches in the capital, Nairobi, and other cities in late January, condemning the immediate crisis of femicide and longstanding problems in the police and judicial handling of GBV cases, and demanding government action. The online campaign gained significant traction, with people sharing stories and demanding accountability.

Between August and November, the police reported 97 new femicide cases. Following a damning report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, released on 20 November, President William Ruto said GBV was ‘tragic and unacceptable’ and pledged some funding for anti-femicide efforts. However, the credibility of the government’s response was repeatedly questioned following the escape of a suspect who confessed to killing 42 women, and the use of police violence against anti-femicide protesters on both 25 November and 10 December.

The women’s movement continues to call for better investigation and prosecution of GBV cases, the implementation of laws protecting women’s rights, the establishment of a special unit to deal with femicide cases, the creation of education programmes on GBV and the funding of support services for survivors.

#NiUnaMenos in Argentina and beyond

In major cities of Argentina, women marched for the ninth year running on 3 June under the #NiUnaMenos (‘Not One Woman Less’) banner. Against the backdrop of anti-feminist backlash – a regional trend that is particularly visible in Argentina, where it’s now coming from the highest echelons of power – protesters denounced multiple forms of violence, including femicides, rising hate speech, anti-gender disinformation and backtracking on gender policies under the far-right administration of President Javier Milei.

Three days later, the government announced the closure of the former Ministry of Women, which it had previously downgraded and placed under the Ministry of Justice. Shortly after, the government also shut down the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism, which Milei called ‘sinister’.

The customary #NiUnaMenos march was also held in neighbouring Uruguay, with feminist collectives highlighting femicides, disappearances and sexual violence and criticising the state’s attitude of looking the other way. They also defended Law 19,580 on GBV, enacted in 2018, against proposed amendments that would weaken it, demanding its full implementation.

The law mandates comprehensive policies to prevent violence, punish aggressors and protect and provide care and reparations to victims. It covers various forms of violence, including symbolic, obstetric and workplace violence, and explicitly applies to all women without discrimination, including on grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity or disability status. Its inclusion of transgender women is a major reason the law is under pressure from anti-rights groups.

In Costa Rica, reported increases in GBV led a coalition of feminist and women’s rights groups, leftist organisations, students and independent activists to call for a mass mobilisation against patriarchal violence, under the #NiUnaMenos banner, on 13 July. Many more across the continent rallied behind the #NiUnaMenos banner in 2024, mostly on 25 November.

Australia against victim-blaming

Australia witnessed a wave of protests against GBV in July, with demonstrations taking place in multiple cities including Canberra, Darwin, the Gold Coast, Hobart and Melbourne. Rallies organised by the What Were You Wearing advocacy group brought together hundreds of protesters, including survivors, families of victims, political leaders and community members. The protests came in the light of alarming statistics: 54 women had been killed in Australia in 2024 so far. Protesters emphasised the urgent need to address victim-blaming culture. The personal testimonies of those directly affected added force to their demands.

Protests had previously erupted across Australia in April, when the death toll reached 27, prompting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to declare GBV a ‘national crisis’ and pledge increased funding to combat it, but little has changed. Protesters therefore took to the streets again with demands for both immediate practical support and systemic change. These included calls for increased funding for specialist domestic violence organisations and women’s shelters, mandatory trauma-informed training for first responders, increased support for men’s behaviour-change programmes and the strengthening of laws against domestic violence.

Long-term efforts by Aboriginal women’s rights groups brought tangible results in 2024. Australia’s Indigenous women are seven times more likely to be homicide victims than non-Indigenous women and 33 times more likely to be hospitalised due to family and domestic violence. In August, a Senate inquiry into ‘Missing and Murdered First Nations Women and Children’ concluded with 10 recommendations to the government. In September, the government announced a multi-billion-dollar package to tackle GBV, including around US$124 million dedicated to improving the safety of Indigenous women and children. On 25 November, the government announced the imminent inauguration of a National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Family Safety Plan.

Rejection of rape culture in India

In August, the rape and murder of a 31-year-old junior doctor at RG Kar hospital in Kolkata sparked mass protests across West Bengal, culminating in a powerful midnight march on India’s Independence Day. Under the slogan ‘Reclaim the night’, thousands of women took to the streets carrying flaming torches and blowing conch shells to demand justice and question when women would gain true independence. They highlighted that the victim had been attacked while resting during her hospital shift, which showed that even professional women in supposedly safe workplaces are vulnerable to violence.

The incident triggered nationwide strikes by doctors demanding better hospital security measures, while mounting distrust in the police investigation led to the case being transferred to the federal Central Bureau of Investigation. The case exposed serious security lapses, as the accused had unrestricted access to the hospital.

Protesters expressed frustration at the lack of progress since the landmark 2012 Delhi gang-rape case, pointing to continued institutional failures in protecting women’s safety. Rooted in deep-seated cultural, economic and social factors, GBV is alarmingly common and widespread in India. It’s also widely underreported, with reporting rates estimated to be as low as one per cent. But research conducted after the Delhi case showed significant increases in reporting rates in the aftermath of the protests, and a similar effect can be expected from the recent protests in West Bengal and their national reverberations.

Solidarity with rape survivors in France

At least 2,000 people mobilised in Paris in September to support a rape survivor and condemn systemic failures in handling sexual violence cases. The case that sparked the protests was utterly horrific: 71-year-old Gisèle Pelicot was regularly drugged by her husband for years, enabling dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious and as he filmed the assaults. The trial involved 52 defendants, including the husband and 51 men accused of participating in the rapes. The fact that they all were perceived as respectable members of the community highlighted the extent to which rape culture has become normalised.

Pelicot became an unexpected feminist icon when she asked that case proceedings be made public, refusing to feel ashamed for what had been done to her, instead publicly shaming her abusers. Feminist activists highlighted the instant change this created, with growing numbers of women coming to them for help using the same exact words: ‘I am Gisèle Pelicot’. Extensive media coverage showed them they were not alone: what they had experienced as an individual ordeal was a social phenomenon. And prevailing impunity, with over 90 per cent of rape complaints not accepted and only 0.5 per cent resulting in convictions, didn’t need to be so.

The case could become a catalyst for legal reform. The defence argued that consent isn’t explicitly required under current French law, which defines rape only in terms of ‘violence, coercion, threat, or surprise’. A previously stalled legislative proposal to include consent in the legal definition of rape has now gained new momentum, with the justice minister emerging as a powerful ally for reform. The push for reform follows a regional trend, with 19 European countries having adopted consent-based definitions of rape.

French protesters drew parallels with Spain’s handling of the infamous ‘Wolf Pack’ case in 2016, where public pressure led to stronger sentences for perpetrators and legal changes defining all non-consensual sexual activity as rape. They criticised the language used in the Pelicot trial, with the court president’s references to ‘sex scenes’ rather than rape reflecting a much deeper problem of rape culture in the French judicial system. But they also drew hope from the strong presence of male allies at protests, whose support feminist activists believe is crucial in addressing and preventing sexual violence.

The struggle goes on

The context for women’s rights struggles is becoming increasingly challenging in more and more parts of the world. On top of the usual resource constraints and institutional resistance that typically result in limited and slow policy responses, growing anti-rights backlash, democratic backsliding and increased civic space restrictions are raising safety concerns for activists.

But no one said it would be easy. Feminist activists have long struggled against the systemic violence that underpins gender hierarchies and injustices through the ups and downs of political tides, including in contexts of conflict, authoritarianism and repression. They’ve made the greatest gains under conditions of democracy and peace, shifting into resistance mode to counter regression in more inhospitable times.

And they’ll continue to do so, opening windows every time a door closes. They’ll continue to work on all fronts: pushing for legal reform, seeking cultural change and supporting survivors. They’ll continue to combine street protests, online campaigning, community education and political advocacy, as much as each context allows. To tackle the enormity of the task ahead, they’ll need all the support they can get, from as many allies as they can find.

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