November 25, 2025 – From today for 16 days, Antigua and Barbuda joins the global UNiTE campaign under the 2025 theme: “UNiTE to End Digital Violence Against All Women and Girls.” In small-island societies like ours, digital spaces are extensions of our physical communities where we learn, work, socialise, and build opportunities. When abuse enters these spaces through cyberbullying, threats, stalking, image-based abuse, misinformation, or harassment, the harm is real, the impact is lasting, and the consequences echo across families and generations.
This year’s observance unfolds through a coordinated schedule of national activities, including the SARC Open House, public education initiatives, faith-based engagement, the Virtual Global Symposium, a youth parliament debate, and a panel discussion with UN Women. Alongside these, the AIDS Secretariat will host its World AIDS Day programme, reinforcing messages of dignity, health, protection, and human rights for all.
The heightened period of activism will conclude on December 10 with the Honey Bee Theatre’s staging of Ntozake Shange’s For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide directed by Zahra Airall at the Multipurpose Centre. A fitting artistic close that honours the resilience, vulnerability, and truth of women’s stories. The production will have a Secondary School Matinee and an evening performance.
As a people, we must reaffirm our commitment to creating safer digital and physical environments, strengthening national legislation and policies, urgently providing survivor-centred services, and building a culture that refuses to normalise or excuse violence. Online spaces should uplift women and girls, yet too many still face harassment, threats, and violations that fracture community well-being.
Increasingly, as a people, we have become numb, even immune to virtual bullying, public shaming, and the debasement of our women and girls. What should horrify us has become background noise; what should provoke outrage is now dismissed as entertainment or political gamesmanship. This rapid slide toward normalisation demands a national pause.
This year’s 16 Days campaign is our opportunity to take stock, reset our standards, and restore vigilance in how we police our digital spaces. It is a call to confront and collectively address the targeted online attacks that harm our women and girls with such frequency and ferocity. We must be alert, we must be vocal, and we must hold each other accountable.
Together, we stand for safety, dignity, equality, and empowerment for every girl and woman. Let us raise our voices, act, and help build a world free from violence. Violence must never be acceptable, online or offline.
Sixteen days. One message. Violence ends when we decide it must.