Beyond symbolic activism

For genuine change, the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence should engage rural people.

While I was attending the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing+30 Review last month, I received a WhatsApp message about the rape of an 8-year-old girl by a teenage boy of the same community in Madhumara, Biratnagar. This was yet another example corroborating the UNICEF data, which claims that over 370 million girls alive today, or one in every eight worldwide, have experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18.