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#ForAllWomenandGirls is a rallying call for action on the thirtieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Pritha Chatterjee from India talks about the importance of supporting feminist organizations and working with young people to change social norms.
Pritha Chatterjee leads global positioning at Breakthrough, a non-governmental organization in India that works with young people to prevent gender-based violence. Breakthrough co-leads the Generation Equality Action Coalition and has been a grantee the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, managed by UN Women.
“Violence and discrimination start early in the lives of girls, and it starts with the family and then the school,” says Chatterjee, speaking with UN Women during the 19-21 November 2024 Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference to review progress on implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
“Gender equality and quality education are inextricably linked,” says Chatterjee. “By working with young people and adolescents, we want to bring a generational shift to discriminatory norms.”
By 2028, Breakthrough aims to reach 4 million adolescents across 35,000 schools in India.
Chatterjee narrates a story to show how empowering young people can make tangible differences.
“Anchal joined Breakthrough’s school-based intervention for adolescents and became a youth leader,” says Chatterjee. “She learned to speak out against sexual harassment in public spaces – a taboo topic for many adolescents and young women. Her elder sister had never reported the incidents she experienced or witnessed, fearing that her education may be disrupted, or worse, that she would be blamed.
“Together with her school group, Anchal approached local officials and was able to convince them to install lights and CCTV cameras in areas that women and girls identified as being unsafe.”
Consequenty, incidents of harassment reduced, and girls in her community are now more confident about speaking out against violence.
Research confirms that the presence of a strong and autonomous feminist movement is the most critical factor to drive change in ending violence against women and girls.
Feminist organizations are significant, Chatterjee says, in “developing accountability mechanisms, amplifying and creating strategic messaging for different stakeholders to advance the agenda of gender equitable development, and advocating for feminist policies and gender transformational approaches with government and decision makers”.
“Diminishing funding for feminist networks and women’s’ rights organizations make it difficult to host in-person meetings and participate in regional and global processes,” she adds.
See also
The Roundtable was co-organized by UN Women and ESCAP, and co-funded by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) under the UN Joint Programme on Gender-Based Violence Prevention in Southeast Asia (2024-2029), implemented by UN Women and UNFPA.