One Day One Struggle (ODOS)

Concept and Rationale

The One Day One Struggle (ODOS) campaign was first held last year, under the umbrella of the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights (CSBR), in eleven different Muslim countries. The CSBR emerged in 2001 from the “Women, Sexuality and Social Change in the Middle East and Mediterranean Symposium” organized by Turkey's Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR), a global nongovernmental organization (NGO) interested in achieving legal reforms in Muslim societies worldwide. For main information, click here.

The main aim of the campaign is to highlight and attract attention to the diverse sexual and reproductive health and rights issues prevalent in Muslim countries on a local and international level. The attention of local governments is important because they are key decision makers in the formation of policy. The attention of the international community is important because their funding and technical support will further bolster existing efforts to alleviate sexual and reproductive health rights in Muslim countries.

The need for such an endeavor lies in the prevalent situation in numerous Muslim countries worldwide. In some countries you have honor crimes and marginalization on the basis of sexual orientation i.e transgenders; Pakistan and the Middle East to be exact. Others like Indonesia may not be plagued by such problems but have higher incidences of teenage pregnancies, abortions and STD’s. In the aftermath of 9/11 such problems have only become more severe as extremist ideologies have pervaded into mainstream cultural discourse.

However diverse their sexual & reproductive health and Rights issues may be, Muslim countries all have one thing in common: the fact that their respective problems all stem from myopic and dogmatic interpretations of religion. In short, the cancer, so to speak, is widespread and belligerent, but ultimately curable through the promotion of alternative cultural discourse and policy dialogue.

In this context it makes sense that the various efforts between Muslim countries be coordinated simultaneously on a global level, and lead by the local partners in each country to make sure that a culturally appropriate course is taken. ODOS is an important milestone in this regard: the fact that so many different countries will be part of a simultaneous struggle to achieve social and ideological change –despite the existence of stumbling blocks such as political instability, cultural intolerance for alternative discourse and growing extremism –is admirable in itself. However, it is even more important that the struggle continue until the ultimate end is achieved.