Ann Jones Blogs "16 Days of Activism" from West Africa

I think your work with women of impoverished countries is very important. The suffering of women in under developed areas needs to be brought to the attention of the public so that they can began to get support form the rest of the world.

How amazing to dedicate your life to something like this!

I think this is a very important project. These voices need to be heard, documented, and preserved so we can recognise and help women in need around the world. Violence is an ugly thing - in all of its forms - and no country is completely free from it. Projects like this help bring attention to the problem and spread awareness that, yes, this is an issue we should be concerned about!

Thank you for all of your work!

It is quite certain that the humanitarian situation in West Africa, as in other parts of Africa, is truely lamentable. You have continued to restore hope in these individuals who are deperately in need. By devoting your life to this cause, you have increased awareness and overall have allowed the peoples' voices to be heard. You have provided access to safety and sustainable change for millions of people who lives have been shattered by violence and opression. For once, these individuals can tell their stories.

Dear Ann,

One of the greatest innovation of the 21st century. You connected the voiceless women to the world. I can feel the impact. This is more than action speaks strategy...keep this priceless work of yours.

Bravo International Resccue Committee! One of the unique chemistry of IRC has always been it is beneficiary-oreinted and close to its clients programming intervention. Empowerement of the beneficiaries is one of the core principle of IRC. When I was in Kakuma Camp IRC was a talking point by different agencies and community memembers simply because refugees are key players in program management and decicion making process-they have an equal say like their counterparts. This time round you went beyond...giving women an opportunity to use digital camera to tell their pain staking stories as mothers, wives, sisters and daughters.

Keep on your good work IRC and congra Ann taking the lead to end violence against women.

Mequanent G. Mull from Louisville, KY USA

Hi Ann. I’ve been reading your blog. I’m a psychotherapist in NYC (USA) and want to comment on one issue.

First, it was great to hear the women you’ve recently been writing about reflect on ways to stop the violence that mothers-in -law encourage against their daughters-in-law; in particular, by not doing the same when they become mothers-in-law.

I think it is important to remember that there is a very unconscious process that is likely to take effect when these women become mothers-in-law (despite their wishes to the contrary), which may cause them to perpetuate the same cycle of encouraging violence against their daughters-in-law. Unless women become aware or keen to the tendency for this cycle to continue due to unconscious forces, the repetition will likely take place. That’s the case throughout history and individual histories as a result of trauma.

This unconscious process is commonly based on the idea that it’s better to become like the aggressor than to remain the victim.

And unless women recognize the unconscious pull to reenact the aggression that was inflicted on them, they may inadvertently go the route that feels more automatic (ie, pushed from the unconscious) and become the aggressor, despite stated wishes to the contrary.

I hear a budding awareness of this dynamic emerging in your stories. However, a more intensive understanding of the unconscious pull to repeat is needed to assure that it doesn’t.

I know this language may not be the culturally appropriate language to use to describe this process, but I wanted to convey the idea.

I would be happy to share/discuss this more if that is of interest to you or your readers, since I am very interested and hopeful in securing a safer future for women around the world and believe a more traditional psychoanalytic lens can potentially help at times.

Dear Ann

My today message for readers of this page goes to the responsibility of the private sectors and civil society in the process of freeing the women from various exploitation they encountered because of the miss fortune the society loaded over them. I believe these tow sectors can work a lot in terms of mobilizing the mass towards positive change related to women. Let start the mobilization from internal to external world. The opportunity these sectors got particularly to work on the grass root level societal structures and the professional approach they used in terms of incorporating the issue with the wide development agenda will bring fast changes at the lower level society. Therefore let this sector made a commitment for fast changes to influence the mass.

Dear Ann,

Well done. I'm a fellow journalist and author, working on HIV issues. I started an HIV project in Rwanda three years ago to provide free HIV care and treatment to genocide and rape survivors. It's called WE-ACTx: Women's Equity in Access to Care and Treatment (WE-ACTx.). Check it out. I have taken testimonies of women in Goma, and may head back there in Jan. Hoping to help get a multiservice center for survivors set up in Goma working with Action AID and other groups in partnership with Congolese women's groups that are on frontline, and provider groups like Docs Heal that run the fistula clinic in Goma.

Anyway, I invite you to know about PulseWire, a new global portal for networking women and frontline groups, leaders in global south and north that is focused on social change. It's in Beta Testing, and we are bringing on groups working in three key topical sectors to start: HIV/AIDS, trafficking, and access to safe, clean water (sustainability.

I just created a group forum there called Beyond 16 Days and will repost your blog.

If you're interested in exploring PulseWire, contact me. I hope we can meet one day and compare notes. I'm similarly passionate about giving women voice, and with my Rwanda work, have created a multimedia traveling photo/testimonial exhibit called Tubeho (to live again) project that is touring US campuses. It focuses on the link of war, rape and HIV -- rape as a tool of war and genocide, from Rwanda to Sudan. I would love to see how our paths may lead to some future collaboration.

fyi my own book, it's called 'Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS (Verso, 2006), and I also co-produced a film documentary, 'Pills, Profits, Protest: Chroncle of the Global AIDS Movement (Outcast films, 2006) shown last year exclusively on Showtime.

Again- great work and thanks to IRC for supporting your voice and those of the West African women.

Anne-christine d'Adesky
journalist, author, filmmaker-
co-Founder, WE-ACTx

Please one more commment.
Human nature is not what conventional wisdom may say. With Gandhi, I believe in reaching the core goodness in people. But if people resist that, I do not know what to do.

I do not think we really understand human nature. What we take to be the nature of men and the nature of women is probably not the real or true nature of either gender. And gender is a creation. The definitions of male and female in this world are contrived and have one primary purpose: to subjugate women, to rationalize and justify violence against women---and children.

Violence against women and children exists because of misogyny-supremacy-bigotry-self hate.
It is so deeply rooted in everyone's consciousness that I do not believe we know what male or female nature is; thus we do not know what human nature is.
If we could look at humanity with fresh eyes, we might see that men and women are humans and are not so impossibly-irreconcilably different, as we all think. As long as we postulate that it is normal for women to need to respond to men and normal for men to aggress on women, then we are going to have problems in this world.
These are not lofty ideas. The key to world peace is respect for women and children and all of life. As long as women and men are seen as different with men being superior and women being inferior and in need of being controlled, we are going to have violence against women and children---and men who refuse to do violence against women and children are also going to be persecuted.

Hi Ann you have touched my heart with your profile .Personally i have tasted that life of being semi refugee and i kow by experienc e what it means may God give suffient grace as you do HI work.

I will perticipate in the 16 days of women on violence and on 8th of December as the coordinator of THE NADEG we shall have big Marathon event for women and girls at Bukhungu stadium as part of the 16 days can we get some leaflets of massages from your team?or any written materials?
we have even community library can we make arrangement for some newsletters,books,journals on domestics violence gender,and general women issues.we shall appriciate very much .

I hope to hear from you soon

sammy shikuku co-ordinator The Nadeg group

I cannot wait to see these blogs and get the emails about them---the 16 days.

I have read, more than once, Next Time She'll Be Dead" by Ann Jones and it is very important to me.

I hate the way women are treated in this world.
But a man who is "soft" on women is not respected. I am never going to change, however, because to do the things that indicate to women that I cannot be taken advantage of (be cold, be hard, take control of her, put her in her place...etc.) are against my nature and my will. I never found an American woman who could accept just being together and not fighting for power and control. So I live alone and call that my stand. I am unemployed again and close to running out of money---again. I know it is because of my need to respect women for being women; I do not even like "dirty jokes."