Human Rights Campaign Report : Ni Una Menos
ELLIE ROSE LUCIJA MIHELIC
Ni Una Menos ( Not One [ Woman ] Less ) is a feminist human rights campaign born in 2015 after a body of a missing fourteen-year-old girl was found burried ( Biglieri , 2020 ). This case was just one in the wave of gender-based violence ( Sjöberg , 2018 ) which is why , following the discovery of the news , an Argentine journalist Marcela Ojeda called for a mobilisation of people in order to stop this from happening again ( Fuentes , 2019 ). Within minutes , this Twitter call turned into the planning of a first-ever Ni Una Menos demonstration ( Fuentes , 2019 ) under a corresponding hashtag # NiUnaMenos ( Sjöberg , 2018 ). The demonstration gathered hundreds of thousands of people in Buenos Aires on June 3 2015 ( Chenou and Cepeda-Másmela , 2019 ). The protests also spread across the country as well as internationally in countries such as Uruguay , Chile and Mexico ( Garibotti and Hopp , 2019 ). The movement ’ s initial goal was a fight against femicide due to its prominence and nonpartisanship ( Abrego , 2017 ; Garibotti and Hopp , 2019 ), but its scope widened to include sexual abuse , oppressive reproductive laws and overall gender inequality as well ( Garibotti and Hopp , 2019 ). The campaign ’ s success can be attributed to its usage of social media networks in combination with traditional street activism ( Sjöberg , 2018 ; Swee , 2019 ) as well as the creation of the National Index of Male Violence which offers data on gender violence ( Chenou and Cepeda-Másmela , 2019 ). The aim of this report is to evaluate the Ni Una Menos campaign
in terms of its relevance , effectiveness , efficiency and impact . The report will focus on its abortion work due to the large scope of the campaign , and a narrow scope of the report
RELEVANCE Ni Una Menos ’ abortion campaign primarily promoted the message that legal abortions only being allowed if the pregnancy endangered life or resulted from rape ( Human Rights Watch , 2020 ) was unjust . They argued that it not only forced women , particularly those with socioeconomic disadvantages , to unnecessarily risk medical complication and fear prosecution when getting an illegal abortion ( Demsas , 2020 ), but that it was also a major violation of social justice .
The Ni Una Menos ’ campaign messages were partially aimed at the public through social media . This was in an effort to encourage people to reassess their perspective on the issue , inspire outrage at the social injustice and compel them to join the protests in favour of decriminalising abortion . Moreover , targeting the public through social media creates a discursive space where public opinion can be formed which in turn exerts greater influence on political action ( Romero , 2014 ). This further highlights why Ni Una Menos prioritised targeting the public opinion .
SCHOOL OF THE ARTS 2021 / 2022
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