Stand Up For Women’s Rights in Chicago at Amnesty’s Annual Human Rights Conference

This article originally appeared in the Lawndale News under the title “Standing Up For Women’s Rights at Home and Abroad.”

A human rights abuse epidemic is happening right now in every corner of the globe. It has manifested in Mexico where twenty-six women were sexually assaulted by police in San Salvador, Atenco.

It has manifested in Guatemala when 15-year-old María Isabel Franco was raped and brutally killed, and in Afghanistan, where a women’s rights advocate was murdered in the street.

And it has manifested in Chicago, where nearly 1 in 5 Chicago youth experience violence in a dating relationship.

Violence devastates the lives of millions of women and girls worldwide every year. One out of every three women will be physically, sexually or otherwise abused during her lifetime.

The right to live free from violence is part of a broader set of sexual and reproductive rights that Amnesty International is working to protect through its My Body My Rights campaign.

As we observe International Women’s Day on March 8th, it is time to take action to make the one in three become none in three.

The International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA), introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), would make ending violence against women and girls globally a priority for the United States by improving and better coordinating existing U.S. foreign assistance efforts to stop the global crisis of violence.

This International Women’s Day, please take the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of women and girls around the world: encourage your representatives to support the bill.

But don’t stop there. Become a part of something even bigger, a global movement of people working to end human rights violations worldwide.

Join Amnesty International USA at our Human Rights Conference taking place in Chicago April 4-6 and take action for women’s rights everywhere.