16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence

Global 16 Days Campaign against Gender-Based Violence

Femi(ni)cide in Focus

Fall 2024 Panel Series - Zoom at 10:00 AM EDT

RSVP to Attend

 

October 15 – Femi(ni)cide and Femicide Watch

Charlotte Bunch - Moderator

Dr. Dubravka Šimonović - Femicide Watch as a National, Regional Global Prevention Tool

Dr. Myrna Dawson - Research and Advocacy by the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability

 

October 29 – Femi(ni)cide and Reproductive Justice

Melissa Upreti - Moderator

Dr. Lila Sharif - Reproductive Genocide in Gaza

Rebecca Reingold - Reproductive Health, Rights & Justice in the U.S. Post-Dobbs

Dr. Udodiri R. Okwandu​ - Black Maternal Health: A Historic Struggle

 

November 12 – Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

Dr. Sarah Deer - Moderator

Dr. Shannon Speed - Ending Violence Against Indigenous Women: Rethinking Human Rights and Tribal Sovereignty

Dr. Sherene H. Razack - Racial Terror: An anti-colonial approach to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

 

For more information on the Global 16 Days Campaign: click here! 

For more information about the panel series, contact: 
Dr. Julie Rajan - vgjulie@womenstudies.rutgers.edu

PANEL 1
October 15: Femi(ni)cide and Femicide Watch

This panel explores the intersecting phenomena of femicide, the deliberate killing of women and girls due to social perceptions of their gender, and feminicide, how the actions and inactions of nation-states facilitate that violence. Femi(ni)cide is driven by the devaluation of women and girls in societies globally that subjects them to a wide range of gender-based violence (GBV). Those experiences of GBV are further compounded by the multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination women and girls experience due to other identities they assume related to their sexual orientation, class, caste, religious affiliation, ethnicity, etc., within their families, communities, nation-states, and the global community. Collectively, this devaluation renders women and girls vulnerable to a wide range of gender-based human rights violations—most commonly rooted in intimate partner relationships—that so undermine their human security that they are vulnerable to immediate or early death. Given the frequency with which femi(ni)cide occurs every day on a global scale, UN Women has labeled this violence as “the most brutal and extreme manifestation of violence against women and girls."

In this panel, experts examine how femi(ni)cide is preventable and how the initiation of Femicide Watches and Observatories at the national level can prove to be effective tools in its prevention.

 

Charlotte Bunch, Moderator

Founding Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership

Charlotte Bunch, Distinguished Professor Emerita in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University, was the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership. She has been an activist in feminist, LGBTQ, and other human rights movements for over 50 years. She was a leader of the Global Campaign for recognition of women’s rights as human rights as well as other international feminist initiatives. She has written numerous influential essays and edited eight anthologies as well as authored Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action and Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women's Human Rights.

 

Dr. Dubravka Šimonović, Panelist

Former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and Consequences

Dr. Dubravka Šimonović has over 30 years of experience working as a legal expert on human rights at the national, regional, and international level. Her primary focus has been centered on women’s rights, in particular responses to and prevention of violence against women, and femicide. As a former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and Consequences, (2015 to 2021) she launched a Femicide Watch prevention initiative. Prior to this, she was member and Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.  Dr. Šimonović has also served as Chairperson of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and was a member of the UNIFEM Consultative Committee. At the European level she chaired the drafting of the Council of Europe Istanbul convention on prevention of domestic violence and violence against women that is today most detailed international instrument on combating violence against women. 

 

Dr. Myrna Dawson, Panelist

Founder and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social & Legal Responses to Violence and the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice & Accountability

Dr. Myrna Dawson is a Professor of Sociology, University of Guelph, Canada. She is Founder and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social & Legal Responses to Violence and the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice & Accountability. Her research examines violence against women and children with a specific focus on femicide. She is the co-editor of the recent collection, The Routledge International Handbook of Femicide and Feminicide (2023) and Senior Advisor/Project Lead for the Femi(ni)cide Watch Platform, a joint project of the UN Studies Association (UNSA) Global Network and the UNSA Vienna's Femicide Team.

PANEL 2
October 29: Femi(ni)cide and Reproductive Justice

This panel examines femi(ni)cide through the lens of reproductive justice in multiple contexts with a special focus on the United States given the upcoming presidential election. Experts explore how the devaluation of women and girls globally severely undermines their access to reproductive rights and health, including to bodily autonomy and bodily integrity, in both everyday life and crisis situations, such as conflict. 

In this panel, experts examine how the inability of women and girls to access their reproductive and health rights—in addition to numerous other inter-related human rights—subjects them to extreme forms of gender-based violence, such as unsafe abortions, which make them vulnerable to immediate or early death. 

Melissa Upreti, Moderator

Human Rights Expert & Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific at the International Commission of Jurists

Melissa Upreti is a globally recognized human rights lawyer. She served as Chair-Rapporteur and Expert Member of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, from 2017-2023, and has since joined the International Commission of Jurists as Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific. She is a graduate of Columbia Law School.

 

Dr. Lila Sharif, Panelist

Assistant Professor, School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University

Dr. Lila Sharif (she/her/hers) is a creative writer, researcher, educator, and faculty in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University where she teaches courses on Indigenous ontologies, race/ethnicity, Arab and Muslim experiences in the United States, food studies, global feminisms and a host of other topics. Her current work conceptualizes Palestinian land, food, and culture through a global feminist Indigenous perspective. She has published essays as well as poetry in academic and public journals. She is a co-founding member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective and a co-founding steering member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective.

Rebecca Reingold, Panelist

Associate Director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, and Adjunct
Professor at Georgetown University Law Center

Rebecca Reingold, J.D., is an associate director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Her research focuses primarily on reproductive health, rights, and justice in the United States and globally. Reingold previously worked as an associate director of the Health and Human Rights Initiative, where she conducted research on health and human rights, sexual and reproductive rights, and violence against women and girls in Latin America and the Caribbean. She currently serves on the advisory board of Training in Early Abortion for Comprehensive Healthcare (TEACH).

 

Dr. Udodiri R. Okwandu, Panelist

Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at WGSS, Rutgers University

Dr. Udodiri R. Okwandu is a historian of medicine whose scholarship and teaching contextualize profound racial and gender health inequities in the United States. Her current project traces how scientific and socio-cultural understandings of race and motherhood have informed medical understandings of and responses to maternal mental illness. She is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. As a Presidential Scholar at Harvard University, Udodiri earned her PhD and MA in the History of Science. Organizations like the American Association for University Women, Institute for Citizens & Scholars, and Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine have supported her work.

PANEL 3
November 12: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG)

This panel explores femi(ni)cide through the lens of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. In their home nations indigenous women and girls are disproportionately subject to a startling range of human rights violations in comparison to their men and boy counterparts, as well as to other communities of women and girls.

Experts explore how this extreme marginalization routinely results in the murder and/or disappearance of indigenous women and girls, which is often unaccounted for in national registers globally.

 

Dr. Sarah Deer, Moderator

Distinguished Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies and the Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Kansas. Chief Justice for the Prairie Island Indian Community Court of Appeals

Dr. Sarah Deer is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas. Her 2015 book, The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America is the culmination of over 25 years of working with survivors and has received several awards, including the Best First Book award from the Native American Indigenous Studies Association. A lawyer by training but an advocate in practice, Dr. Deer’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of federal Indian law and victims' rights, using indigenous feminist principles as a framework. Dr. Deer’s work to end violence against Native women has received national awards from the American Bar Association and the Department of Justice. She has testified before Congress on four occasions regarding violence against Native women and was appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to chair a federal advisory committee on sexual violence in Indian country. Dr. Deer was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2014. In 2019, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

 

Dr. Shannon Speed, Panelist

Paula Gunn Allen Chair and Professor of American Indian Studies, Gender Studies, and Anthropology at University of California-Los Angeles; Director of the American Indian Studies Center; and Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs

 Shannon Speed is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. She is the Paula Gunn Allen Chair and Professor of American Indian Studies, Gender Studies, and Anthropology at UCLA, where she also serves as Director of the American Indian Studies Center and Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs. Dr. Speed has worked for three decades in Mexico and the United States on issues of Indigenous rights, gender, neoliberalism, violence, migration, and activist research. Her books include the award-winning Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler Capitalist State (UNC Press 2020) and the co-edited volume with Dr. Lynn Stephen, Heightened States of Injustice: Activist Research on Indigenous Women and Violence (University of Arizona Press 2021).

She is currently working on a new book with her own tribal nation entitled, “Chickasaw Spring: Law and Resurgent Sovereignty in a Native Nation.” She is a recipient of the President’s Award from the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Chickasaw Dynamic Woman of the Year award from the Chickasaw Nation. She served as the President of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) from 2018 to 2021. Dr. Speed is active in her tribe’s language revitalization program as a learner and teacher, and serves as a board member of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo (CIELO) and on the leadership circle of the Indigenous Education Now Coalition (IEN) in Los Angeles.

 

Dr. Sherene H. Razack, Panelist

Distinguished Professor and the Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Gender Studies, University of California at Los Angeles

Sherene H. Razack is a Distinguished Professor and the Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Gender Studies. She is an interdisciplinary critical race and feminist scholar whose work engages several fields including Sociology, Legal Studies, Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, American Studies and Political Science. With a central focus on racial violence, she explores how imperialism, colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy interlock to produce and sustain a racially structured world where racialized populations are marked as disposable and subjected to an unrelenting violence. Her books and publications examine settler colonialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and global white supremacy with a particular focus on the gendered effects of anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, anti-Asian and anti-Muslim racism as they operate in law. Her most recent books are: Nothing Has to Make Sense: Upholding White Supremacy Through Anti-Muslim Racism (2022) and Dying from Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries into Indigenous Deaths in Custody (2015)

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These events are sponsored by:  

The Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies–New Brunswick;

The Institute for Women’s Leadership;

The Humanities Plus Pedagogical Initiative;

Rutgers Global;

Margery Somers Foster Center, Rutgers University Libraries;

The Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights;

Douglass Residential College;

The Center for Research on Ending Violence;

The English Department-New Brunswick;

The Honors College–New Brunswick;

The Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures;

The Museum of Freedom, Tolerance, and Human Rights, NJ.