ECWR held a seminar entitled “Sexual Harassment … To Where?!” on Monday 5th, of November, 2012 from 05:00 PM to 08:00 PM at Nahdat El-Mahrousa in cooperation with a bid number of youth initiatives.
In the frame of the strenuous effort of ECWR in its campaign “Safe Streets for Everyone” that it has been launched since 2005 to combat sexual harassment. Which means from 7 years, as ECWR is the first organization in Egypt addresses this issue in the Egyptian Society in order to pay the attention of the responsible personals of the dangerous of this problem and the consequences of its spreading on the society in addition to break the silence of society.
In this regard, ECWR issued many publications aiming to ban this phenomenon, recognize its reasons. The publications include two studies the first one issued in 2007 entitled “Sexual Harassment … Social Cancer”; it collected complaints form 3000 women and girls.
The second study conducted in 2008 entitled “Clouds in Egypt’s Sky”. This study focused on analyzing the reasons, motives, practices of harassment and its impact on all aspects of life including education, work, tourism, economy, and others. Also, ECWR has submitted a draft law and its clarification memorandum to the president Dr. Mohamed Morsi on 22nd August, 2012.
In this seminar, ECWR cared on collecting the youth efforts which have been done to complete what ECWR has started in its campaign that aim to struggle the sexual harassment in the Egyptian streets.
The youth initiatives aim to combat sexual harassment in the streets especially in the holidays, which contributed greatly to control on what is known as “collective harassment”.
The representatives of the youth initiatives spoke in this seminar included * I will not be silent on harassment, * HarssMap, * I wish, Fingerprint, * I saw harassment, * Against harassment, , * Be a strong man, * the public campaign against harassment, * We still human being, * Not Guilty, * Bahya Misr.
In the end of the seminar, ECWR agreed with the youth initiatives on the need to organize the efforts at many levels including target groups, subjects, and the geographical area in order to avoid any repetition of the work or focusing only on Cairo or the great cities. ECWR will work with them on the coordinative plan to achieve greater results. ECWR also will work on providing the technical support to all the needed groups to support their capacities to get best results aiming to eliminate the crime of sexual harassment in Egypt.
ECWR thanked and expressed its deep appreciation to all great efforts that appeared in the feast through these initiatives. ECWR emphasized that we will work on utilizing all of these experiences and will collect all these valuable ideas to launch a joint campaign.
