Building a human rights culture
Effective action requires not only responding to incidents of gender-based violence and working to prevent individual instances, but also building a culture based on alternative principles and values to those which underlie gender-based violence and discrimination.
Other possible actions might include advocating for the signature and implementation of the Lanzarote Convention, or the abolition of sterilisation as mandatory for sex reassignment, or forbidding the ‘sex normalising’ surgeries that exist in some countries and which operate on new born intersex without information being given to those involved, and sometimes without their consent.
Working for gender equality demands measures that will lead to substantive equality. Such work can involve empowering women and girls, and LGBT+ communities, to take part in community life, including creating spaces and opportunities for them to participate in decision making and policy design.