Have you noticed the White Ribbon banners that have gone up in town? White Ribbon Day is commemorated every year, all around the world, on November 25, in an effort to bring focus on the problem of violence against women; which is the most common form of family violence in New Zealand. Over the coming weeks I will be writing about how we can work together to prevent family violence. This week I want to touch on how the White Ribbon campaign got started.
On the afternoon of December 6, 1989, Marc Lepine, aged 25 years, walked into a University in Montreal, Canada, and murdered 14 of his female classmates.
His actions were the catalyst for a national debate in Canada on violence against women. Two years later, a small group of men in Toronto committed themselves to taking positive action to prevent violence against women. Among other things, they decided to start wearing a white ribbon as a symbol of their opposition to violence against women.
As a result of the commitment of this small group of men, the White Ribbon campaign continued to build momentum. In 1999 the United Nations General Assembly declared November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and adopted the white ribbon as its symbol. There is a word for that sort of commitment - inspirational.
Michael Kaufman is one of that small group of Canadian men who had the vision and commitment to make a difference. In 2011, 20 years after he and others first came up with the idea of White Ribbon, he outlined what he considered to be the six critical breakthroughs of the White Ribbon Campaign:
Thinking big, and agreeing to an on-going campaign focused on making White Ribbon a mainstream issue for men;
Focusing on the problem of silence - as silence isolates victims and empowers offenders;
Uniting people from all sectors of the community under one "big tent";
A belief that once men understood the seriousness of the issue, they could and would take action;
Encouraging men to exercise leadership and make a stand;
Ensuring the campaign was always led by individual communities, as local people know how best to reach people in their community.
During the next few weeks as we head toward White Ribbon Day, I will be unpacking some of those ideas in the hope that we can mobilise our community to make it a safer one.
• Inspector Bruce Horne is the Rotorua police Area Commander.