Equality Now was founded in 1992 to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world. Working with local human rights groups and individual activists, Equality Now documents violations of these rights and adds an international action component to support local and national efforts on behalf of women’s rights and on behalf of individual women who are suffering human rights violations. Equality Now is adapting action techniques that have proven effective in the context of other human rights organizations (such as letter writing appeals for the release of prisoners of conscience) and using these techniques both to help individual women and to promote women’s rights around the world. By gathering information about human rights abuses and distributing it to groups and individuals around the world, along with recommended actions for publicizing and protesting these abuses, Equality Now hopes to facilitate the coordination of an international force for women and human rights. Equality Now brings an expanded concept of human rights to mainstream international human rights work, taking up many issues which have generally been considered outside the scope of international human rights, such as trafficking in women, domestic violence, reproductive rights, and female genital mutilation. What Equality Now adds to the work of groups already fighting for women and human rights is a worldwide, rapid-response grassroots action component that will have an immediate impact on individual situations and a long-term impact on social policy.
In May 1993 Equality Now reviewed British and Swedish legislation and commented on draft United States legislation criminalizing female genital mutilation. Although female genital mutilation is practiced in the name of tradition and culture in many countries, many grassroots women’s organizations in these countries are fighting within the same tradition and culture to eradicate female genital mutilation. After consultation with the London-based group FORWARD and with other groups and individuals who have long been campaigning against this human rights violation, Equality Now issued its Women’s Action, calling on UNICEF to provide greater funding for efforts to stop genital mutilation of girls. The Women’s Action followed a “Day One” report aired in September 1993 by the American television network ABC, in which the Executive Director of UNICEF acknowledged that of the $922 million budget of UNICEF, only several hundred thousand dollars are spent on these efforts. As of the end of 1993, the campaign to increase these funds has generated letters and petitions to UNICEF from groups and individuals around the world.
