National Campaigns
Parallel to the regional activities, partner organizations and their allies initiated national awareness campaigns. These campaigns are aimed at taking activities to a higher level as there is the pressing need to raise awareness among decision makers.
Through providing information and gathering resources, the project partners have begun working on draft laws and advocating civil society support for their campaign in their respective countries.
Although the two partners in Occupied Palestinian Territory and in Egypt were not able to bring the draft laws to their national parliaments, the issue of criminalizing domestic violence were brought to the forefront of public debates. This publicity allowed our partners to create national networks and build allies around them.
In Jordan, the network was one of the motivating factors that helped produce the landmark decision of changing the legal status of women through the enactment of the new family protection law in 2008. The “Family Protection Law” is mainly based on the draft provided by SIGI/J, the Salma partner organization.
First steps
Throughout the campaign, activity partners tried to establish themselves as reference organizations so that decision makers will continue to seek advice from them about the nature of domestic violence, its scope and consequences in society.
One of the main campaign strategies was to attract professional expert groups - judges, lawyers, teachers and social and health workers - as advocators who build up the political will towards the adoption of their draft laws by opening the necessary channels and connections.
What makes SALMA distinctive is that:
All partners activities add value to each other in terms of knowledge, experience and production of campaigning materials. The activities are designed to avoide any duplication with the possibilities of being adopted in other countries. Examples of these activities are:
In the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Women Center for Legal Aid and Counseling produced a movie on honour killing, which is the first drama on the topic in Palestine. “Menna wo Feen” was launched in a public event in Cinematic al Qasab in 2008 Ramallah. The film is currently used in all campaign activities; workshops, conferences and training courses in order to stimulate the debate on different levels: for public and for decision makers.
In Jordan, SIGI/J is running the AMAN website is the only Arab regional electronic resource centre specialized in issues of domestic violence. The website attracts a large number of visitors.
As for Egypt, Nadeem Center presented a national research mapping violence against women in Egypt since Beijing 1995. In addition, Nadeem worked with young directors and produced 11 short films based on real cases of domestic violence in Egypt. These movies were produced with a very modest budget but were requested to be presented on leading film festivals in Egypt and in USA.
Combining the specific activities on the national level and joint activities on the regional level will further ownership and contribute to the sustainability of the network.