Breaking the Silence on Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces: UN Women convenes stakeholders to make Dili a safer city for women and all people

Dili, Timor-Leste — UN Women has convened over 50 stakeholders to share information on what UN Women is doing globally to improve women's safety in public spaces, and present key approaches and tools available to support safer cities.

These discussions importantly involve male allies, such as Jose Smith, Deputy Administrator of the Dili Municipality, who stated that “In Timor-Leste, women’s safety is a highly important issue to make our country safer for women and girls. In terms of how to eliminate sexual harassment in public spaces, we need to implement laws to limit perpetration of sexual harassment.”

Photo: UN Women/Felix Maia

The objective of these discussions is to introduce UN Women Safe Cities Global Flagship Programme and to present key results from the Scoping Study conducted in November 2017 during the 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women and Girls Campaign. The Study findings inform locally-owned programme development in Timor-Leste, with information and data that may deepen understanding of sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence against women and girls in public spaces in the local context of Dili.

Women normally ignore and keep silent about catcalls, stalking, repeated requests for their phone numbers, male public exposure, rubbing, groping or hearing indecent language being yelled at them by men as they walk by.

Sunita Caminha, UN Women’s Head of Office in Timor-Leste said that, “The study makes more visible the widespread experiences and harmful consequences of sexual harassment and violence in public spaces. It is a universal issue that overwhelmingly targets women, stems from their unequal status in society, and, particularly affects women with disabilities and the LGBTI community. The findings show the urgency of joint action to remove this barrier to sustainable development and make Dili a Safe City for all people in their diversity.”

Photo: UN Women/Kyeongrang Park

By convening different partners in identifying opportunities and challenges to integrating the issue of women's safety in public across sectoral plans and interventions, UN Women Timor-Leste is bringing together partners for designing a more comprehensive approach to addressing the issue of sexual harassment in public.

This builds on UN Women and Rede Feto advocacy for women’s safety in public since 2014, including the 2016 Dili march to end to sexual and street harassment in Timor-Leste and UN Women’s experience with Safe Cities Programmes in more than 30 cities around the world.

Sexual harassment is not normal, but too often it is normalized as the way things are. In the coming months, UN Women and partners will work to raise awareness of the lack of security that women feel as they move about in the public spaces, and how this hurts everyone in society. Partnerships and joint actions will be established, and involve men as active agents of change, to break the silence and stop sexual harassment and gendered violence in Dili and across Timor-Leste.