The World Council of Churches is relaunching its “Thursdays in Black” campaign, urging women and men to join the movement and stand up against a culture that enables rape and sexual violence to take place. The campaign was origfinally inspired by existing women’s groups, such as the Argentinean “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,” who stood outside the presidential palace in Buenos Aires every Thursday, demanding to know what happened to their children who “disappeared” under the former military dictatorship.
Or the “Women in Black” groups that started with silent protests in Israel and Palestine and then spread to other conlict countries, such as Rwanda during the genocide and Bosnia during the Balkans war.
Or before any of those, the Black Sash movement of white women protesting against the violence of apartheid policies in South Africa.