16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence 2025

On this International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, EL*C joins the global movement for the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, amplifying the voices that have too often been silenced, excluded, or erased. This year’s campaign is carried out under the framework of the European Union’s CERV-2023-DAPHNE call, through our project “Preventing and combating intersectional violence towards LBTIQ women and non-binary persons”.

This project supports, empowers, and builds the capacity of lesbian organisations working at the local, regional, and national levels to combat gender-based, domestic, and institutional violence against cis, trans, and intersex women, as well as non-binary people who identify as lesbian, bisexual, or queer. With this funding, the EU plays a crucial role in strengthening grassroots movements and ensuring that LBTIQ communities can become sustainable, effective actors in the fight against gender-based violence.

We say it clearly:
Lesbophobia is gender-based violence.
And it must be addressed as such.

This year’s campaign theme, UNiTE to End Digital Violence Against All Women and Girls, reminds us that the violence lesbians face takes many forms (physical, symbolic, institutional, and increasingly digital). For lesbian communities, the internet is both a space of connection and a space of harm. From image-based abuse to digital silencing, our realities are continuously shaped by intersecting systems of misogyny, lesbophobia, racism, and transphobia.

But digital violence is only part of the picture.

Across Europe and Central Asia, lesbians still face institutional neglect, targeted propaganda, exclusion from public discourse, and erasure from the very policies designed to protect women. Too often, we are deemed “too political”, “too radical”, or simply invisible.

In response, EL*C takes action and leads.

This year’s campaign includes ten powerful posts spotlighting:

• The need for public funding for lesbian-led movements.

• Lesbophobia in education, healthcare, and digital spaces.

• Reproductive justice as a lesbian issue.

• The realities of lesbian life in Ukraine and Palestine.

• Testimonies of racialized and undocumented lesbians across Europe.

• The strength of our communities that led to the first-ever UN call centering LBQ women.

We start our campaign in Brussels, where lesbian activists from out NGOs members took the floor at the European Parliament, as part of EL*C and WAVE Network’s joint Study Visit. Hosted by the LGBTIQ+ Intergroup, our members delivered clear, urgent messages about institutional violence and intersectional resistance. Their speeches echoed across the halls of power, and they will not be forgotten.

Because we are not asking just to be included, but demanding to be centered.

Violence against lesbians is gender-based violence.

It is systemic. It is political. It is preventable.

But only if institutions, governments, and societies finally choose to act.

What EL*C is doing:

• Providing over 1 million euros in direct funding to lesbian organizations in 2025.

• Publishing data and reports on lesbophobic violence across Europe and Central Asia.

• Holding institutions accountable through political advocacy.

• Supporting survivors, activists, and frontline defenders of lesbian rights.

What you can do:

• Follow and share our campaign on social media.

• Engage with your MEPs and national representatives.

• Demand that GBV policies name and address lesbophobia.

• Fund lesbian-led movements, because resilience requires resources.

From 25 November to 10 December, we rise with survivors.
We rise with truth. We rise with action.

Because our lives are political. Our resistance is unstoppable.

Join us. Amplify us. Act with us.
#NoExcuse #ACTtoEndViolence #LesbiansAgainstGBV #16DaysOfActivism