2015 Winners & Shortlists

Execution

In Lebanon, there is no law that protects women from domestic violence. As such, domestic violence remains a big taboo, covered by the law of silence. For years, Kafa, a leading NGO, has been working relentlessly on developing a draft law project to specifically protect women from domestic violence. The law went back and forth for years, and remained for a long time dormant in the parliament’s drawers. On April first 2014, the parliament was meeting to pass several laws. So, three days before the parliament meeting, Kafa came to us for help. In Lebanon, the same MP’s have been in office for decades. And these same MP’s were getting ready again for the upcoming elections. In Lebanon, women constitute 52% of the voting force. We decided to threaten our MP’s with the one weapon that could actually hurt them: OUR VOTES. In order to establish this idea of accountability and get people to talk for the first time to their political representatives at an equal level, we invited people to put a condition on their votes and, consequently, barter a vote for a law that aims to protect them, against a vote from the MPs during the upcoming parliamentary elections. WE WILL ONLY VOTE FOR THE MPS WHO WILL VOTE ON THE LAW AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. IT WAS THAT SIMPLE. In our country, when the Lebanese vote during elections, they soak their thumb in blue ink to ensure they only voted once and did not use someone else’s ID to vote another time. So to symbolize our threat, we used this voting symbol and asked citizens to use their voting thumb, replacing the blue ink with the red color, the color of blood and injuries of violated women. Like wildfire, people from all walks of life joined our movement resulting in an unprecedented wave of engagement that led to the passing of the law. In less than 72 hours our red thumbs created an unprecedented wave of engagement. On Vote Day, we wanted to transform our virtual movement to further increase the pressure. MP’s were meeting inside the parliament. We were outside on the street engraving our red fingerprints on the pictures of all the members of Parliament. With those 128 stained portraits we created an unprecedented outdoor of approximately 120m of length.