Commuters in Egypt’s capital are being confronted by a new series of comics plastered on the walls of the city’s metro stations.
Aiming to raise awareness of the city’s worsening sexual harassment statistics, the comics first appeared at the weekend as part of a campaign called “What will you do?”
According to the UN, 99.3% of women in Egypt are victims of sexual harassment, with 91% saying they feel insecure in the streets as a result.
The crime is not properly defined under Egyptian law, making prosecuting difficult and often resulting in women being blamed for the harassment they’ve suffered.
The images, created by artist Ahmed Nady, respond to these issues by depicting the challenges women face on a daily basis while navigating the city – from dealing with a culture of victim-blaming to feeling unsafe.
One illustration shows a young woman finding it harder and harder to tolerate the daily harassment. “Sometimes I feel like my body is just a piece of cloth covering my soul, and I tell myself that I am not the one being touched and those words aren’t directed at me,” the caption reads.
The character is then shown debating which outfit to wear, imagining the different comments each would elicit from men on the street.
“This is the nightmare every girl faces every day as she picks out her outfit before going out,” the non-profit organisation behind the campaign wrote on its Facebook page.
‘They make you think’
Imprint, the organisation behind the campaign, has been raising awareness of sexual harassment through events ranging from one-on-one conversations to workshops, co-founder Abdel Fattah al-Sharkawy explained.
He said participants – both male and female – often found they weren’t aware of what constitutes sexual harassment, and rarely related the term to their own day-to-day experiences.
“We wanted to make that link” through the comic campaign, he said.
The group decided to work with comics because “they’re catchy and colourful”, drawing people of all ages in to explore the stories they tell, Sharkawy added.
Another image from the series shows male passengers on a minibus reacting to the young woman.
“This woman can be an influential person in your life,” the illustration reads. “Sexual harassment doesn’t harm her alone, it harms us all.”
They differ from typical public service announcements because they rely on storytelling instead of propagandistic slogans, so they “make you think and form an opinion,” he said.
The images first appeared on the walls of the Shohadaa metro station in downtown Cairo, and will next move to the Mohamed Naguib, Sadat and Attaba stations. Other posters will also be hung in the Helwan University, Mansheyyet El Sadr and Cairo University stations, which were targeted due to their high-volume traffic. The campaign will run until February 2016.
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