CONVOCATION 29 November 2015: Let's stop wasting money on weapons and dedicate it instead to erradicate gender violence

Let's stop wasting money on weapons and dedicate it instead to erradicate gender violence

While the expenditure for weapons has increased in Spain year by year since the 90’s because of commitments made to the weapons and defense industries by the Ministry of Defense, the UN has urged the government of Spain to fulfill its international commitments with regard to the issue of gender equality in face of the alarming retrogression in this matter produced in recent years because of discrimination against women both in legislation and in practice.

This last 7 November, thousands of women and men from all over Spain demonstrated in Madrid regarding the macho violence that affects women throughout their entire lives. Globally, up to 70% of women experience psychological, economic and sexual violence perpetrated by their partner or former partner.

During armed conflict, rape and sexual violence are exacerbated and used as weapons of war, including violence against women of all ages, affecting millions of women and young girls with an aim to humiliate and terrorize the people and to destroy communities creating the fiction of giving birth to others. This violence is aggravated by the growing islamization in various countries, mainly harming women because of the presence of ISIS or other armed groups.

Violence against women is not limited to one specific culture, region or country, nor to a particular group of women in society. The violence against women has its roots in the persistent discrimination against women.

On 25 November, declared by the UN as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women:

♀ We ask for a life for women without fear and violence.

♀ We demand a radical change in the budgets, so that we cease wasting money on weapons and dedicate it instead to social goals and especially the eradication of gender violence.

♀ We request implementation of feminist social policies with the equal participation of women.

♀ We affirm our confidence in dialog, justice and nonviolence as a path for understanding among people.

♀ We see the need to promote “Education for Peace” from the perspective of gender, intercepting situations of violence at their roots and promoting nonviolent social change; to participate in the tables for Peace negotiations; to work for autonomy and equality; to create a just and lasting Peace and to cry out for “truth, justice and reparation” so that the horror will not be repeated.

Let us remove war
from history
and from our lives

Translation: Trisha Novak, USA – Yolanda Rouiller, WiB Spain