Campaign against violence

"Men cost...! Who bears the consequences of their violence?" - a campaign on the acts of violence against women takes place in Kiel in November. Violence against women is, unfortunately, a fixture amongst numerous and various topics. It simply won't go away, for whatever reasons.

At the threshold of the new millennium, Kiel's Commissioner for Women, Annegret Bergmann, and the Committee Against Violence Against Women' decided about the unusual approach. The central theme of the 20-odd-event campaign was 'the cost of male violence'. It drew attention to the largely overlooked fact that it isn't the victims who cause the immense financial, social and psychological. This immense burden on society is caused by violent acts against, exclusively by male-perpetrators.

Dr. Christine Bergmann presented government's action plan to combat violence against women. An installation brought to life the network for battered women that has been established in Kiel in recent years but is now under threat from the urgent need to save on costs.

Other events included a congress on "Crimes against sexual self-determination", lectures on the situation of lesbians and on violence against female migrants or violence that can still be found in the police force and the judicial system, films followed by discussions, an art exhibition, a theatre workshop, readings and, last but not least, a lecture on the campaign's central theme, "How much does male violence cost society?" by Professor Barbara Kavemann, the leading German expert on the financial aspect of violence against women.

The organisation for rape victims presented a preliminary assessment of its campaign "1001 men against violence against women", which involves not only a pledge of non-violence and a donation by the men taking part, but also making their names public on a poster.

The organisers hope that the campaign as a whole has helped to raise the awareness of violence, not as a problem of the victims, but a problem of the perpetrators and of society as a whole.