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Violence against women is a persistent world-wide problem, and occurs in every age and economic group. The perpetrators of that violence are often well known to their targets. Domestic violence, in particular, continues to be frighteningly common, and to be accepted as “normal” within many societies. As a matter of fact, up to 70% of women will experience violence during their lives and among women aged between 15 and 44 years, acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined. Violence can be exercised in many ways and by many different people, but the underlying fact is that violence causes gender inequality and gender inequality causes violence.

For this reason, the Equal Opportunities Department at UNI Global Union has a campaign to fight against violence against women, in order to help Break the Circle! of violence.

This year we decided to give a different approach to our campaign. Gender violence is a problem that concerns both men and women, and we wanted to focus on the role of men and include them as agents of change. This is why we decided to call this year's campaign:

"BE MAN ENOUGH. BE A LEADER AGAINST GENDER VIOLENCE".

We have developed a series of tools and information that will help us spread the message even more, such as:

• Increasing the amount of existing information, data and tools on this issue.
• Encourage affiliates to organize events, video screenings and workshops that include men in them, and send the pictures and a summary of the actions to be posted on the website.
• Create a blog where we will continue to include news and material sent by the affiliates and/or created by the department.
• Promote our videos containing “Break the circle”, “Violence at work” and a new video about the role of men in gender violence, which will be launched on Thursday, 25 of  November on the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women”.
• Included more downloads containing posters, info graphics, brochures, flyers and other material made by the department for our affiliates to use.

You can find all the abovementioned information at:

www.breakingthecircle.org, as well as in our blog.

Today we would like to ask you for your support in spreading this campaign. Go to our website, download our flyers and take pictures of men in your union holding them up. Encourage them to stand up, to speak out against violence.

Send us your pictures so we can share them and help us spread the word.

Be an agent of change, BE MAN ENOUGH. BE A LEADER AGAINST GENDER VIOLENCE.