The Public Foundation ‘Don’t Be Silent!’: The Unsilent Bouquet

The Public Foundation ‘Don’t Be Silent!’ is fighting for women's rights and encourages females not to be silent about cases of sexual violence. The objective is to draw the attention of the Parliament, make them see the real scale of the problem and tighten the penalty for sex violence.According to World Health Organization, in Kazakhstan every 3rd woman was sexually abused. But females in Kazakhstan are still silent. They afraid to talk about such cases due to fear of shaming and convictions of traditional society, where victim blaming is strongly developed and women don’t feel strong protection from the Government.

We found a new media to draw people’s attention: in flower shops we replaced the popular wrapping paper for bouquets called ‘newspaper’ with other wrapping paper on which dozens of stories from the ‘Don’t Be Silent!’ foundation were printed. And all these stories were about violence against women in which rapists did not receive the punishment they deserve. We called it “The Unsilent Bouquet».