ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s renowned TV actress Mahira Khan has joined the international #JoinTheChorus campaign to “increase awareness of domestic and sexual violence and call for collective action”.
The campaign has been initiated to prevent domestic violence and sexual assault in 54 member countries of the Commonwealth, led by the No More Foundation, the Commonwealth Secretariat and social impact company Gentle Forces.
The actor shared information about the campaign on her Instagram account through various posts. “Hi I’m Mahira Khan, an actor from Pakistan, and I invite you to ‘join the chorus’ and say ‘no more’ to domestic and sexual violence,” Khan says in the first video she posted.
“We either know of or have experienced first hand, some sort of abuse or sexual/domestic violence,” the caption read. “The more we speak up, the more we break the silence surrounding domestic and sexual violence.”
“Let’s break the culture of silence that has enabled domestic and sexual violence to persist for so long,” she said in a second post. The actor shared a third video in relation to the campaign as well.
According to the campaign website, #JoinTheChorus “aims to increase awareness of domestic and sexual violence and call for collective action”. The campaign is led by artist FKA twigs who’s joined by renowned public figures such as Rose Byrne, Joselyn Dumas, Khan, and Thandiwe Newton.
Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by a male intimate partner. As per the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in Pakistan “32% of women have experienced physical violence and 40% of ever-married women have suffered from spousal abuse at some point in their life (The Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey)”. It is highlighted that these statistics do not represent the full extent of cases of violence. “One in two Pakistani women who have experienced violence never sought help or told anyone about the violence they had experienced,” according to the UNFPA.
