HUMAN RIGHTS DAY 2025

Today, Human Rights Day, closes 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence—a reminder that gendered violence is not a “women’s issue,” not a separate category, and not a marginal concern. It is a human rights violation—one of the most pervasive and insidious globally. In too many places, these rights remain fragile, contested, or actively under attack.

Over these past days we’ve shared voices through our What Would You Say to Her?  campaign—strangers speaking to strangers, sometimes survivor to survivor, across borders, languages, and lived realities. This is a conversation, carried from community to community.

Throughout the 16 Days, Footage's online events have been centered in Central Asia, particularly Kyrgyzstan. This builds on our work where, since last November, we have been working alongside partners—crisis centers, government ministries, advocates, and those with lived experience—to understand what is working in the national response to violence against women, and where barriers exist.

Together, we’ve held events, created spaces for dialogue, and conducted a national needs assessment across government, civil society, and survivor communities. To our knowledge, it is the largest assessment of its kind in over a decade—shifting who is heard, how decisions are informed, and what becomes possible.

Today we gathered across Kyrgyzstan for a Human Rights Day Stakeholder Summit—bringing together government, civil society, crisis responders, and international partners to share findings, listen again, and press for more coordinated, trauma-aware protection and policy. This work moves slowly through stages (for example, we start simply by asking, “What does “voice” mean to you?”) and built through collaboration. We know, and are learning more every day in our own geographies, systems change when voices gather, pressure grows, and participation becomes hard to ignore.

None of this—not the research, not the convening, not the moments of breakthrough or trust— is possible without you. Your support carries this work powerfully across borders.

We invite you to read the public press release here: HUMAN RIGHTS DAY SUMMIT TO REPORT ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN INITIATIVE IN KYRGYZSTAN

With all our hearts, on this Human Rights Day and always, thank you—for never giving up, for trusting this work, and for helping us imagine and co-create a future of security, of dignity, and, crucially, of justice.