CAN WE END GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE?

Sir,
Eradicating gender-based violence (GBV)-related issues in our society completely is a challenge that even the most powerful deities would have a tough time battling. When it comes to issues like GBV, what we can do is hope that initiatives and programmes started by different organisations get to actually help reduce the rate. This is often achieved through empowering the affected and creating policies that make a significant attempt to deal with such issues; hence reducing them and their associated effects. This is how the birth of campaigns like 16 Days of Activism against GBV came about.

Campaign

16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an international campaign that began in 1991 at the Women’s Global Leadership Institute, hosted by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University, where activists launched the initiative to raise awareness and advocate for the elimination of violence against women. It was celebrated annually from November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) to December 10 (Human Rights Day).

In Eswatini, this campaign has been observed since 2021. This comes after the United States (UN) Development System and development partners; Swatini Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA), the European Union (EU), Men Engage Swaziland, Women in Law Southern Africa (WLSA) and the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office launched the 16 Days of GBV campaign, joining the rest of the world.

Awareness

Since the launch of the campaign in the country, it has helped raise awareness and support survivors, inter alia. 17 391 GBV cases were reported in Eswatini in 2023. Of these, 67 per cent were women and 33 per cent were men. GBV is defined as any harmful act based on gender differences that inflicts physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering. There used to be a time where even having conversations on the topic seemed taboo. You wouldn’t dare hear people talking about how there’s a man or woman somewhere who gets beaten to a pulp by their significant other for whatever reason and no one dares to intervene; not their family; not their friends.

Reporting

Goodness! Even reporting that was in itself an issue, owing to various reasons. One of them being that if you were to walk into a police station or post to report it, chances were, they were not going to take it seriously. Why? Because the rest of our society took it lightly as well. If you were to tell ‘the family’ that your partner – the person you swore to love until what you had hoped would be a natural death, was playing boxing every time he came back home from work or wherever, with you as an unwilling participant and boxing bag, they would advise you to stay and keep it under wraps because they preferred holding an early funeral over having people know a member of their family was beating their significant other.

Appreciate

We have to appreciate the baby steps we have been taking as a country to spread awareness about GBV and encourage conversations about it in our circles. We are not where we want to be when it comes to ending it, but we are not where we were when we started these campaigns and conversations either; and that is something to appreciate. As we celebrate the month of love, let us remember that it is best to walk away in one piece, than it is to hold on until you ‘accidentally’ get murdered or get so emotionally and mentally abused, you slowly descend to actual madness. It is also best to leave people than to realise your children will now grow up orphans or repeat the same behaviour in their own homes as a result of growing up in homes where GBV was always served for dinner. As Oscar Wilde once said: ‘A burnt child loves the fire.’

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