FreeThe20 was a 2015 campaign to call attention to women who were political prisoners around the world. The campaign named twenty women who were imprisoned unjustly. [1] Samantha Power, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, started the campaign for the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration. [2]
Contents
The reason for the campaign was to tell governments to stop putting women in prison, and to tell the women and their families that they were not alone. There were twenty names of women in twenty days, one for every year since the Beijing Declaration. [3]
In September 2015, a bipartisan "#FreeThe20" bill was introduced to the U.S Senate. All twenty women senators of the two political parties supported the bill. They said, [4]
- As 20 women serving in the United States Senate we stand unified in calling on governments to recognize the universal human rights of women and to release women who have been imprisoned unjustly for exercising those rights.