Launch of Women’s Refuge 2008 Annual Appeal

Thank you, Heather, for the opportunity to help launch Refuge’s annual appeal. 

Others have spoken about the focus of this year’s campaign on domestic violence as a human rights issue, and I support your efforts to help people recognise such violence for what it is: a violation of human rights and an outrage against people everywhere, especially the victims. 

As Hillary Clinton said at the 1995 Beijing conference on women, “it is time for … the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights”.

She said: “It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives”.

That conference, which resulted in the landmark Beijing Declaration on the rights of women, was more than a decade ago and I am feeling optimistic because I am beginning to sense a sea change in New Zealanders’ attitudes

It may not seem like it when you are at the front line of the Refuge movement helping women and children reshape their lives, but family violence is at least now firmly out in the open and ordinary New Zealanders are beginning to speak up.  

When I was helping to set up Rotorua’s first Refuge back in the late 1970s I remember how hard it was to get people to even acknowledge the problem, let alone talk about it.  Today people are talking about it in their homes, at work, and, in the past couple of weeks, in their thousands on-line.

The Refuge must take a good share of the credit for that change, both for your tireless advocacy over the years, and for the huge contribution you are making to the Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families.

The `It’s not Ok’ advertising campaign is having a big impact. A survey conducted during March and April this year showed that 89 percent of people remembered the campaign, with nearly one in five people (19 percent) saying they have taken some action.

My colleague Ruth Dyson leads the Taskforce, and she asked me to pass on her best wishes for a successful campaign.  Having senior ministers on the Taskforce says a lot about the commitment the government has to ending family violence.  But the thing that really makes the Taskforce powerful, is the way in which government, communities and community organisations are working together to find solutions. 

The solutions lie with ordinary New Zealanders.  When we collectively decide that family violence must never be tolerated; that every perpetrator must be held accountable and helped to change; and that every survivor must be believed and supported – then, and only then, will the violence end. 

I know – government knows – that we can’t do that on our own.  We need organisations like the Refuge and we value, beyond anything I could say today, the immense contribution you make.

Good luck with your appeal. 

All strength to your efforts to change how New Zealanders view family violence. 

Thank you.