By Yunus S Saliu
Gender Based Violence has been described as a grave human rights violation, thus, inequitably affects women and girls; it is otherwise referred to as ‘violence against women and girls.’
Addressing the members of press, Sunday, 24th November during an organized press briefing in observance of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence 2019 organized by the Network Against Gender Based Violence (NGBV) in partnership with United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), Fallu Sowe National Coordinator for NGBV gave an in-depth information about Gender Based Violence.
He disclosed that this year celebration marks the 27th edition of 16-Day of Activism Against GBV Campaign initiated in 1991 by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership.
The 16-Day international campaign with the global theme for this year “End Gender-Based Violence in the World of Work” #ILOendGBV with the national theme “No to Sexual Violence in Work Places” will runs from 25th November to The international Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to 10th December Human Rights Day. This, he said symbolizing the link between violence against women and human rights.
The campaign among other things aims to harmonize efforts to end all forms of sexual and gender based violence in The Gambia. As the theme reflects, he said, the core principle of the transformative 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and reinforces the UN Women Campaign commitment to a world free from violence for all women and girls.
He reminded government and people of The Gambia some of the international and regional treaties and conventions that The Gambia is a signatory to.
Despite all the advocacy and awareness creation done by Civil Society Organizations and Government Institutions in partnership with UN Agencies and donor organizations to end all forms of violence against women and girls over the past two decades, he said, gender based violence and discrimination against women and girls still continues to be a big threat.
After many years of prohibiting domestic and sexual violence and criminalizing of FGM/C and child marriage, he said, the prevalence of these forms of violence against women and girls is still high. Pointing out that this is “indicated by the Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (UNICEF/GBoS 2018),”
“The GBV data collected by the Network from One-stop Centers and other service delivery points continue to show increase in number of sexual violence cases reported from 2014 to 2018. And out of a total number of 2,030 reported cases during the period (i.e. 2014 to 2018), 941 cases (46%) of the cases are sexual violence,” he noted.
Speaking earlier Halimatou J Jesuorobo, Project Manager – NGBV thanked the UNDP for funding this year’s celebration and campaign against Gender Based Violence in The Gambia. She extended their appreciation to all the government partners, media houses, all NGBV member organizations and other individual for the support.
Giving the breakdown of this year activities, as the Network and its partners join the rest of the world during the 16-day of activism, she said they are to remind duty bearers of their responsibility to protect women and girls from sexual and gender based violence; amplify voices of survivors of sexual violence to be heard by policy and decision makers for necessary actions to be taken on their cases; raising awareness of communities on the effects of sexual violence and encourage community members, engage school going children, teachers and school authorities to prevent sexual violence in schools, conduct mass education on sexual and gender-based violence issues happening in communities among other things.
The Network hopes to achieve these through a seven-day nationwide caravan campaign that will involve various activities to engage different sectors of community in The Gambia.
