WHAT IS ONE BILLION RISING?

One Billion Rising is the biggest mass action to end violence against women in human history. The campaign, launched on Valentine’s Day 2012, began as a call to action based on the staggering statistic that 1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than ONE BILLION WOMEN AND GIRLS. 

On 14 February 2013, people across the world came together to express their outrage, strike, dance, and RISE in defiance of the injustices women suffer, demanding an end at last to violence against women. 

On 14 February 2014, One Billion Rising for Justice focused on the issue of justice for all survivors of gender violence, and highlighted the impunity that lives at the intersection of poverty, racism, war, the plunder of the environment, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. For the third year of the campaign, One Billion Rising’s global coordinators chose the theme of “Revolution” as an escalation of the demand for justice, and to build upon the massive efforts of communities worldwide that also looked at the roots and causes of violence as part of their call for justice. 

On (or around) 14 February 2015, millions of activists in over 200 countries gathered to Rise for REVOLUTION, to change the paradigm, demand accountability, justice and systematic CHANGE. We are rising to show we are determined to create a new kind of consciousness – one where violence will be resisted until it is unthinkable. In 2016, the theme of Revolution continues with a call to focus on marginalised women and to bring national and international focus to their issues; to bring in new artistic energy; to amplify Revolution as a call for system change to end violence against women and girls*; to call on people to rise for others, and not just for ourselves.

 In 2017, the call escalated to Rising in Solidarity against the exploitation of women and girls. In so many regions of the world, women are abused in multiple ways across layers of exploitation and oppression. One layer is the deeply entrenched patriarchal structures in society that continue to subordinate and oppress women, and conditions or forces women into submission and subjugation. This creates fertile ground for domination and control over them. Another layer is the exportation of poor women for labor when economic exploitation is globally enforced by imperialist and capitalist states that place profit over people. 

The abuse of the planet, and the commodification and dehumanization of women’s bodies in the service of profit, and in the service of other nations’ profit and development, is the most criminal act of abuse and power. This is especially so when the exploitation is being done to the most marginalized women – indigenous women, workers, migrants, domestic workers, the urban poor and peasant women. The 2017 Rising was a demand to end ALL forms of exploitation of women and girls