Credit: Stand Speak Rise Up!
Her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, who initiated the Luxembourg non-profit organisation Stand Speak Rise Up!, has published a celebratory announcement on the occasion of the association’s fifth anniversary.
Grand Duchess Maria Teresa noted that since 2019, Stand Speak Rise Up! has been able to support more than 9,000 survivors and children born of rape around the world, in war zones, past or present. She added: “These 26 and 27 March, we are celebrating with emotion the five years of the Stand Speak Rise Up Forum! In 2019, I wanted to bring to the forefront this terrible scourge that has rarely been addressed: rape as a weapon of war. At the heart of this forum, 50 Survivors came from the four corners of the globe to testify and challenge us. Their voices were essential, we could not speak for them.
I brought together 1,200 people for two days to support Survivors and demand justice to end war rape, alongside prestigious experts, heads of international institutions and Nobel Peace Prize winners. If this forum was extraordinary, these women, true models of resilience, are even more so. We couldn't stop there, they deserved more than just one event. The rest, as you know, is the creation of the Stand Speak Rise Up! association, with Chékéba Hachemi and Stéphane Bern, surrounded by a Board of Directors made up of experts, Nobel Prize winners, personalities engaged in the associative and charitable sector.”
Grand Duchess Maria Teresa also noted that sexual violence in armed conflicts has been brought to the forefront of the media during the past five years and that listening and sharing about this difficult topic has begun to be taken up in civil society.
For five years, Stand Speak Rise Up! has financed 21 projects in thirteen different countries around the world and indirectly supported more than 24,000 people, the non-profit organisation noted.
In 2024, in addition to continued support for current projects, five new initiatives will be supported. In Afghanistan, a project to provide access to maternal and child health and the continuity of humanitarian food aid to the most vulnerable women. In Iraq, a project for Yazidi Survivors. Finally, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, an initiative will aim to strengthen the economic independence of Survivors and children born from rape.
Stand Speak Rise Up! will also set up a mentoring project for all the survivors it supports this year. This project aims to break this silence, recognise suffering, promote resilience and help survivors become “real leaders” and actors of change.
In addition, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Stand Speak Rise Up! Forum, the non-profit organisation launched a major fundraising campaign “€5 for 5 years”. Anyone interested can donate at the following link: https://donate.standspeakriseup.com/b/mon-don?_cv=1.
