People need to be ‘brave’ enough to hear the stories of abused women and act on them
“When we talk about sustainability, we have to think about 50 per cent of the population, the women and girls, who are excluded from this conversation,” said Freedom Charity founder and president Aneeta Prem at Times Higher Education's Global Sustainable Development Congress 2022. They are excluded “not because they want to be excluded, but because they’ve not been allowed to be part of the conversation”.
Freedom Charity is a UK-based charity formed to support victims of forced marriage and violence against women thought to have brought dishonour to their families. The charity works to ensure that “women and girls receive a good education and are allowed to stay in school past the age of 14, 15, 16”, Prem said. Prem has also helped her father set up a charity in his village in India to educate girls and young women.
Educating children and adults about forced and early marriage and female genital mutilation is necessary if women are to be included in these sustainability conversations as equals.
“We have to deal with difficult topics no matter how uncomfortable this makes you feel,” she said. “You have to be brave enough to invite organisations in” to educate people about these uncomfortable stories.
Prem said that Freedom Charity had engaged with more than 75,000 schoolchildren across the UK. “We also educate young men,” Prem said. “Because without them being on board, we really don’t stand a chance of making the difference we need to make.”
She informed the audience of cases she had worked with, telling the story of a young woman who was forced into an arranged marriage in Pakistan and ultimately died by suicide. She spoke of a woman the charity worked with who had been genitally mutilated at the age of five, and a woman Freedom Charity helped escape from her family’s plans for a forced marriage.
Prem said that her charity was instrumental in getting UK law changed in 2014 to make forced marriage a criminal offence.
“Women and girls will make a huge change to the issue of climate change, to the Sustainable Development Goals that we all believe need to be fulfilled by 2030,” she said. “But if we exclude much of that population, we’re not going to do that. Through education, through your help and support, and through you being brave, we will make a difference,” she concluded.
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