BANGLADESH
A One Billion Rising public hearing on rights of migrant domestic workers will be held. It will be the first of its kind in the country – and will touch on different aspects – the government, treatment of migrant domestic workers among others. Testimonies will be given and it will involve judges and the most prominent lawyers in the country. Judgments from the public hearing will be taken up by the top legal minds for the imminent and future protection of migrant domestic workers. Another part of their OBR campaign will deal with women and land, land issues and property rights. Plans are also being made to Rise for Rohingya women who are experiencing so many forms of sexual and physical violence. Another initiative of their OBR Risings will also be to do a call to Rise for the indigenous people of Bangladesh.
CROATIA
The Croatia Risings will involve productions of “The Vagina Monologues” with women with disabilities, as well as a production featuring Roma women – alongside initiatives to hold a night of Roma poetry done by women. An ongoing action of collecting women’s songs and women’s poetry with groups of women refugees from Syria, Iraw and Afghanistan is also a big part of the OBR Croatia plans.
OBR Croatia will launch the 2018 campaign onSeptember 20th with women workers from the textile factory Kamensko. For seven years women workers have been struggling for their worker’s rights.
Factories have been lost by privatization and been closed down, and workers have stayed without salaries. They have organized hunger strikes to receive unpaid wages. OBR Croatia are Rising for women workers!
INDIA
OBR INDIA is part of the coordination of the ‘Liberty Festival’, to celebrate and Pledge for Liberty against all kinds of discrimination and suppression and upholding principle of equality, equity and freedom. Liberty Festival will be a platform for celebration of individual identity, freedom of speech and expression.
Liberty Festival will commence from the week of September from Allahabad and have a series of similar events till the 26th of January, the Republic Day of India or beyond. The idea is to chart a journey that will affirm the path from ‘Freedom to Republic’. October 2nd, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, will be another date that will be marked by Pledge for Liberty. Youth and others will take the pledge from multiple locations across the country.
The festival we will have various thematic sessions, discussions, theatre, film screening and different forms of expressions. Intellectuals, academicians, activists, actors, film makers, journalists, artists, workers and others from different walks of life and across the country will be invited to share their work and ideas with youth and together celebrate freedom of expression and love for liberty.
The Liberty Festival will commence with a ‘Pledge for Liberty” where people across caste, class, gender, sexuality, religion, region and age will pledge to stand for dignity, justice and freedom in the face of intolerance, discrimination and suppression. The pledge is to protect the values of their Constitution and protect their freedom and liberty. The festival will culminate with the ‘Pledge of Constitution of India’, where people, especially the youth, across the country will pledge to protect the values of freedom, equity and equality, given to them by their Constitution.
MEXICO
OBR Mexico is launching in September – culminating their series of launches around November 25th and the 16 Days of Activism. Ongoing initiatives include recording a new local version of “Break The Chain” with a new artist, and a TV station doing a soap opera about human trafficking – an issues OBR Mexico has been highlighting and carrying since 2013.
NIGERIA
OBR Nigeria is Rising against human trafficking and exploitation of women in the workplace.
PHILIPPINES
OBR Philippines will be Rising against fascism, tyranny and dictatorship – among many other issues facing the country. But the most immediate Rising – is to Rise to demand an end to the three wars the country is facing: President Duterte’s war on drugs, his war on the Moro people in the city of Marawi in the Mindanao region where martial law has been declared, and the war on indigent as well as indigenous people. OBR will be used as a platform to do mass mobilizations and organizing to galvanize people to show collective people power to end these wars. GABRIELA (militant grassroots women’s alliance)– who lead and head the OBR Philippines task force group made up of many groups around the country – are right now conducting an island/nation-wide consultation with grassroots women across the country to discuss the issues and the escalation of Risings. On September 21, they will lead the women and children’s contingent in a huge nation-wide protest against the impending tyranny the country is facing, and to say NO and NEVER AGAIN to another Martial Law rule. On October 28th – the country’s National Day of Protest for Women – OBR Philippines 2018 will be formally launched.
SOUTH AFRICA
OBR South Africa will be focusing on Rising against the killing of women and children in a campaign called “Your Child Is My Child”, and will continue to sustain and escalate their actions around this pressing and urgent issue even as activists continue to get threats.
SWAZILAND
OBR Swaziland will continue to Rise against the exploitation of domestic workers. Their Risings will also include pushing for the enactment of the special amendment of domestic violence law, as well as pushing for women to be part of the political decision making of the country in their coming election year.
TAIWAN
The Garden of Hope – long time OBR organizers in Taiwan are beginning their Risings with a V-Series campaign – with V-Girls, V-Day, Taiwanese original monologues inspired by “The Vagina Monologues”, OBR, and V-Men activities.
They will stage a Taiwanese original play inspired by “The Vagina Monologues” called “Shidi”. The monologues tell the stories of Taiwanese women, from the stories of bar girls, stories of child prostitution, dating violence, teenage pregnancy, the first period, transgender rights among others. This year is the third episode in the trilogy of this series. Next year the best monologues of the three-part series will be shown. The Shidi script will also be published and will be used in schools to educate children.
Their V-Men run will take place in Taipei on November 25th. The event annually sees more than 4,000 people attend. At the same time as this big annual event Garden of Hope is founding a V-Men NGO to coordinate men’s actions to stop gender-based violence all year round.
In Nantou County in central Taiwan OBR Taiwan is organizing a “reclaim the night” run for 2,500 girls. They are also holding a whole series of V-Girl activities that will climax in October, around the International Day of the Girl Child on October 11th which includes inviting outstanding girls from India and the Philippines to come to Taiwan to receive Asian Girl Human Rights and Community Building Awards.
UGANDA
OBR Uganda is Rising against the rape and killing, and to end all forms of human trafficking and sexual exploitation of women.
UNITED KINGDOM
OBR UK will be focusing on rights of migrant domestic workers and refugees.
USA
Risings across the country include rising against fascism, rising for workers rights, rising for the protection of Mother Earth, rising against state brutality and state repression, rising against human trafficking, rising for Indigenous American Native groups rights, rising against extractive industries, rising against discrimination and exclusion, rising against gun violence, among many other issues affecting the country.
ZAMBIA, MALAWI and ZAMBIA
Risings will focus on demanding an end to child marriages and gender-based violence.
ZIMBABWE
OBR Zimbabwe will be Rising to end exploitation of young girls and children in the country who are being sold for sex. Part of their initiative will be to build solidarity around rising for girls and on their behalf, as there is concentrated attack in the country now on their basic safety and rights. Zimbabwe will also be rising to fight for women to take up elected and political offices and be decision makers for the country.
