By Sulayman Ceesay
Fanta Jatta Sowe, rep. director of ActionAid International The Gambia has called on government, civil society organizations, and the public to work together and unite their effort to end all forms of gender based violence in the Gambia.
“We do know that these are serious issues that are affecting specially women and girls in our communities and unless we come together we will continues to face the menace,” she said.
She was speaking during the opening of a day reflection and learning on common and key advocacy practices for Network Against Gender Based Violence members at the police credit union headquarters in Kanifing.
“Our development processes will always be retired because we can never have development when part of the society is left behind,” she said.
The forum organized by Network Against Gender Based Violence (NGBV) is part of a two year project funded by AmplifyChange.
She said if people fail to unite their effort on the fight against, violence against women and girls and sexual violence, people will not able to respond to the needs of those women and girls.
“This activity is one of the key activities of the project and is mainly to bring our members together, not only the co-members but also the stakeholders in the fight against gender based violence and women empowerment,” she said.
She noted that they came together to share skills, knowledge and experiences, discuss the challenges they are faced with and together they look at options that will help to alleviate some of those challenges.
She said the Sustainable Development Goals five as well as National Development Plan of the Gambia as part of the 7 critical enablers there are indicators specifically that talks about eradicating gender based violence and specific indicators on sexual violence.
Fallou Sowe, acting national coordinator, Network Against Gender Based Violence (NGBV) said the forum will provide a platform for participants to discus, share ideas and learn from each other.
He hope that it will be a very fruitful meeting where they will sincerely share what are their challenges in their various advocacies in the work that they are doing to protect women, girls, children and people as a whole in the country.
“This will help us learn from each other to improve on what we have been doing so that we can enhance our advocacy and make sure actions are taking, for those people that need our actions, calls for action.
George Nyouki, monitoring and evaluation officer, Child Protection Alliance (CPA) said CPA is proud to associate itself with stakeholders who are fighting against gender based violence.
“Gender based violence is an issue in the country and needs attention and united effort from authorities and people to reduce it in the country,” he said.
He said with the collective effort of all the problems or challenges in the fight against gender based violence can be reduce.
