Just a simple walk down a street in Egypt is considered a challenge for women. Riding public transportation is a long journey of anticipation and stress. A woman wonders whether this exhausting trip will end peacefully or whether she will have to go through the feelings she has felt hundreds of times before while being touched, spoken to or stared at in a sexual way. With the aim of fighting sexual harassment, a new campaign saw the light this week under the name “Speak Up”. The campaign is launched by Egypt's ministries of investment and international cooperation, youth and sport, and transportation, and the National Council for Women, as well as the French Agence Francaise de Development, Germany's GIZ, and USAID. The campaign comes as the world celebrates the International Day of Combating Violence against Women and the beginning of 16 days of activism to end violence against them. Speak Up encourages both males and females to combat all forms of sexual harassment, firstly by speaking up loudly, unlike the common attitude of most women who stay silent following the shock of the moment; secondly, for men to stand with any woman experiencing sexual harassment and to support her. The campaign aims to raise people's awareness about fighting sexual harassment in public transportation where most harassment takes place, as a recent study shows, according to a report published by the Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation. Through a set of videos, billboards and social media posts and with a number of governmental and private institutions taking part, the campaign is considered the biggest in Egypt and the Middle East. In the campaign's first video, Egyptian stars Menna Shalabi and singer Hani Adel ask for the public's help to combat the social crisis. “Harassment is a crime, and the harasser is a criminal. Why do we always blame the girl for being harassed? Why is she both hurt and blamed?” Shalabi says in the video. The campaign is produced by social media start-up Bassita and funded by private real estate developer SODIC. In a press conference, Sahar Nasr, the minister of investment and international cooperation, said that Speak Up is part of a complete system the government is providing to empower Egyptian women. Maya Morsi, head of the National Council for Women, stressed in the conference that protecting women from all sorts of violence is one of the main pillars of the National Strategy for the Empowerment of Egyptian Women 2030. The posters on metros encourage women to speak up if they are harassed, reminding them of criminal punishment. Egyptian law of 2014 officially states that sexual harassment is a crime, describing it as a felony that imposes jail terms of no less than six months and double the sentence for repeated offences, and/or fines of LE3,000 to LE5,000 for those found guilty. In 2017, a report published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation showed that Cairo is the world's most dangerous mega-city for women. Morsi appeared in local media rejecting the findings, saying the latest figures show that Egyptian females involved in sexual harassment at any point in their life is only 9.6 per cent.
