Aleta: UN Women has been consistently supporting efforts to fight gender-based violence in South Africa. Following the Presidential Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) Summit held in November 2018, an Interim Steering Committee (ISC) on GBVF was established in 2019 and tasked with developing a National Strategic Plan (NSP) on GBVF and a permanent structure - the National Council on GBVF - to ensure effective coordination and implementation of the NSP on GBVF. The term of the ISC on GBVF would come to an end following the establishment of a permanent structure, the National GBVF Council. To support the transition from ISC on GBV to the GBVF Council, UN Women supported a Technical Advisor to support the Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities. Following the exhaustion of funding, we partnered with the Government of Canada to continue supporting this technical advisory role which continues to this day with the technical advisor seconded to the Department of Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities (DWYPD). The NSP is centred around six strategic pillars, and we are partners on Pillar 2 which focuses on prevention and rebuilding social cohesion; Pillar 5 which focuses on women’s Hazel: UN Women has an inclusive approach to its operations, we have seen the organisation partner with the Second Presidential Summit on GBVF 2022. What was your role in the Summit and what outcomes did you expect the Summit would achieve? economic power and Pillar 6 on research and information management. UN Women not only financially supported the 2nd Presidential Summit but also participated in the programme design, logistics, and media working groups in preparation for the second Summit. Our hope was and still is for the Summit to have been a platform where stakeholders could reflect on progress made, lessons learned, and clearly identify areas that need to be strengthened as we collectively seek solutions to the GBVF pandemic in South Africa.
What the Summit did manage to do was to put government, civil society, the private sector, and development partners in the same room to take stock, and have honest and robust conversations. We hope these conversations carry on beyond the Summit and lead to strengthened accountability, acceleration of interventions, and amplification of what's working to address GBVF. It is our hope that we can collaborate as stakeholders, each doing their part, so that these dialogues lead to firm actions that will yield tangible results to combat this problem.
Dec 2022| Collective Action Magazine
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