Anarkia nominated for Human Rights Award

Each year Vital Voices (Washington D.C.) selects a small group of extraordinary women to recognize for their remarkable achievements advancing women’s leadership around the world. This year, Panmela Castro, a.k.a. Anarkia was nominated for the Global Leadership Award of Human Rights for her leadership and trailblazing work using art as a vehicle to promote positive social change and awareness in her community and around the world.

This year Vital Voices is honoring innovators; women on the front lines of creating new and effective ways to combat so many of the same challenges we continue to face advancing the roles of women around the world.  Anarkia is one of those pioneers always fighting for the rights of her comrades and girls in the communities of Rio de Janeiro and abroad. Her work, using graffiti and street art to educate disadvantaged women about their rights, represents an innovative and important strategy in promoting women’s progress.  Vital Voices sees Anarkia as a visionary whose work provides a lifeline to those with the greatest need and are far too often overlooked. 

Anarkia will travel to Washington in March, where she will be joined on stage by other extraordinary leaders from around the world.  Past honorees of the Global Leadership Award include the President of Chile Michelle Bachelet, anti-human trafficking pioneer Somaly Mam, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. 

Panmela Castro, a.k.a. Anarkia

The 28- year Panmela Castro is a Rio de Janeiro based multi-media who uses graffiti and street art to promote social change and awareness within groups of disadvantaged women and girls. Panmela initiated the project “Grafiteiras Pela Lei Maria da Penha” with the local organization ComCausa, a project that links graffiti and urban culture to combat violence against women. Through this project, ComCausa carried out a campaign to educate disadvantaged women about the recently passed Maria da Penha Law on Domestic and Family Violence against Women, a law named after a woman who was so severely beaten by her husband that she was paralyzed for life. 

To further this project, Panmela ventured into the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to create murals that promote awareness about the existence of the Maria da Penha Law and to educate women about their rights under the new legislation. Unable to ignore or avoid the messages the murals portrayed about the importance of Maria da Penha and this law, Panmela uses her art to extend a lifeline to victims or witnesses that were previously too afraid to speak up. Maria da Penha herself has been featured in some of Panmela’s work.

Panmela believes that she can make the world a better place by using graffiti to portray messages of positive social change. Panmela’s socially-conscious art has earned her a place as one of the most important figures in the female Brazilian graffiti movement GraffiteirasBR and paved the way for many female graffiti artists in Brazil. Today, she travels throughout the Americas, Europe, and Africa to promote GraffiteirasBR’s mission sharing her vision through lectures, exhibits, and workshops.

Panmela was one of the young leaders Caramundo has been supporting and coaching from the sidelines. As she is growing in here role as leader, her ambitions grow. Caramundo is happy to be able to work with Anarkia on her projects and is proud to see her being nominated.

More about Anarkia
More about GraffiteirasBR
More about Vital Voices