BSG Women is excited to host an excellent array of speakers on a panel to discuss how non-state actors can impact government policy with regards to sexualised violence. An opportunity to engage with women who have engaged and worked in this field. What are the challenges in the space of advocacy? What are the best practices in different regions and spaces? What can other actors learn from these practices? There will also be 45 minutes set aside for an interactive discussion between the audience and panellists. Please join us for what will be an insightful conversation. 

Open to all. Register to attend the event.

Please see below a description of the speakers as well as material to give context to each of our experts.

Speakers:

Alice Irving
Alice has studied both in social work and law, and is now completing her DPhil in the field of criminal law theory, with a particular interest in grooming laws that target would-be child sex offenders. She also lectures in criminal law at Lady Margaret Hall. Herself a survivor of rape in Oxford, she helped to found the Oxford University Student Union 'It Happens Here' campaign and has been involved in anti-sexual violence advocacy for a number of years. Most recently, she has collaborated with the Guardian on both an anonymous and non-anonymous basis, writing on sexual violence within university environments.
Article: ‘When I was raped as a student, the police barely helped – and nor did the university’ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/29/raped-university-police-reaction-urgent-change

Dr Peace Medie 
Peace is a Research Fellow in the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy (LECIAD) at the University of Ghana and an Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow. Her book project, “Translating Global Norms into Local Action: The Campaign against Gender-Based Violence in Africa” examines how international organizations and the women’s movement have influenced states’ implementation of norms against gender-based violence in Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire.
Article: ‘Fighting Gender-based Violence: The women’s movement and the enforcement of rape law in Liberia’ https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sk2329r7v2gjn7v/AACyi3KObCpW2ZNue2BaCD9xa?dl=0

Qurat ul ain Fatima
Quratulain Fatima is an unconventional policy practitioner who served in Pakistan Airforce before becoming an active civil servant with the government of Pakistan. She has passionately worked with non state actors on issues of domestic and sexual violence in Pakistan. She will speak about the Hudood Ordinance and struggle that led to women protection bill in Pakistan. 
Reference: Study to assess the implementation status of Women Protection Act 2006 http://www.ncsw.gov.pk/previewpublication/4

Tenesha Myrie
Tenesha Myrie is an Attorney-at-Law from Jamaica. She works on gender-based violence and access to justice in the Caribbean. She has served as consultant to UN Women and provides voluntary legal support to local civil society groups and global research advocacy projects. For Jamaica’s recent review of the sexual offences laws, she prepared the collective submission of 10 civil society groups and spoke on their behalf in parliament and on the televised panel discussion with the Minister of Justice and the Opposition Spokesperson of Justice. Tenesha is also a commercial and real estate attorney and is pursing the Master of Public Policy at Oxford University.
Link: ‘Comprehensive Review of Inconsistencies in the Sexual Offences Act and other related Acts - Jamaican Joint Civil Society Submission to the Joint Select Committee’ https://www.scribd.com/doc/243270948/Comprehensive-Review-of-Inconsistencies-in-the-Sexual-Offences-Act-and-other-related-Acts-Jamaican-Joint-Civil-Society-Submission-to-the-Joint-Selec

Kristina Lunz 
Kristina will be speaking on the current revision of the rape law in Germany. Kristina is a graduate of the Oxford Department of International Development and is currently working at the Blavatnik School of Government. She is advising UN Women Germany on the campaign ‘No Means No’ on changing the German rape law and co-author of the campaign ‘Ausnahmslos (‘No excuses)’ – Against sexualised violence and racism’ which she and her team initiated in the aftermath of the sexual attacks in Cologne.
Articles: ‘Sexualised violence in Germany, ‘Nein’ does not mean ‘Nein’
https://blogs.bsg.ox.ac.uk/2016/03/29/sexualised-violence-in-germany-nein-does-not-mean-nein/
‘German women battle for no means no in rape law’
http://www.thelocal.de/20160429/german-women-battle-for-no-means-no-in-rape-law