Every year, the world comes together to commemorate the 16 days of activism against Gender Based Violence, between the 25th of November and 10th of December. This UN Women led initiative was launched in 2008, under the leadership of the office of the UN Secretary General has increasingly gained social, political, economic and digital acclaim, with every year having a different thematic focus, in efforts to streamline action. Under the umbrella theme UNITE, this year’s theme is ‘’Invest to prevent violence against women and girls”
Statistics show that 1 in every 3 women is at risk of violence, whether socially, physically, mentally, sexually or otherwise. Furthermore, a staggering 5 girls and women are killed every hour at the hands of their loved ones, and this is just but a fraction, with most cases unfortunately going unreported. The need for active policies and urgent implementation of the same is at an all-time high, as witnessed in a post Covid 19 pandemic recovery world. In the Global South, the data is more disturbing, with necessity for actionable planning from all pressure groups, governments, agencies, public and private sector players among others being at the pinnacle.
As aforementioned, this year’s theme focuses on investing to prevent violence against women and girls. This may mean different things to different people and groups, as well as yielding different outcomes to the targeted problems facing today’s women and girls. We shall discuss the investment in the following categories.
- Social investment.
- Political investment.
- Economic investment.
- Social investment.
As the civil rights movement activist, Martin Luther King expressed once, “Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Against this backdrop, the injustice carried out against women and girls around the world, must not only be individualized but also, collectivised as a global catastrophe that requires all our efforts to be pulled together. Social investment can be carried out through educational campaigning traditional media and social media mainstreaming, art and cultural experiences, positive framing through pushing positive messaging around public perceptions, attitudes and beliefs targeted towards dismantling negative narratives that further exacerbate Gender Based Violence. More pragmatic ways that this can be achieved is by creating synergy amongst members of the society and ensuring active engagement and respectful dialogue among men and women in a bid to create synergy. Retrogressive cultural norms and philosophies such as patriarchy and misogyny that form the fabric of many cultures across the globe, have increasingly been exposed to be the reasons for and not justifications of damage and pillage towards women and girls the world over. At PAWA254, our main aim is to leverage on the power of art and culture to fight for a more socially balanced and better society. It is with the recognition that comes from working with creatives that we have seen a tremendous positive response from the members of the society that we serve and collaborate with, that we would recommend to all participants in the fight against GBV, to work from an understanding that if violence is normalized as culture, then healing, safety, protection, love instead of hate can be normalised as culture too.
- Political investment.
The political class have a responsibility over every issue that the people of its country face. National laws and policies are put in place, in order to create avenues for affirmative action when instances of need arise. Over the years, pressure groups and activists reckon their loud and moral frustration with public officers and the powers that be for not prioritising the issues that arise from gender relations. In Kenya, the outcry as to why gendered issues are underfunded, in comparison to other public programs, continue to reverberate in advocacy forums and dialogue spaces. Political goodwill is an important factor when it comes to championing for the prevention and elimination of GBV. Governments across the world must carry out their national mandate to budget for issues of gender with the urgency that other sectors for instance infrastructure and public health are given. Strengthening partnerships within existing frameworks should be the dinner bell to further promotion of the efforts to eliminate violence in all its forms.
- Economic investment.
Where is the money? This is the million-dollar question. To further advance any course, we must mobilize resources to ensure that due diligence is carried out effectively. The sustainability of any movement is guided by the financial muscle that it has backing it, and thus creating more avenues for pulling resources together to actively invest in the fight against violence. Some ways of financing the fight include facilitation of trainings within the community level, technological investment, building safe houses, capacity building of those that work in gender spaces, psycho-social support for the victims of GBV, incentivizing legal services and the protection of victims, effective indictment of perpetrators, streamlining justice systems without fear of intimidation for the victims, economically empowering women and girls the world over, investing in girls’ formal education among others.
Gender Equality is listed as Sustainable Development Goal number five, (SDG 5), with commitments to achieve the following targets as a marker of successfully preventing and eliminating GBV cases to zero by the year 2030. The targets include,
- End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.
- Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation
- Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation
- Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate
- Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life
- Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences.
A more palatable call to action is continually seeking out strategic, progressive, amicably financed and effective partnerships whilst working together within cross cultures and across multiple platforms to ensure that we, live in a peace world, where violence against women and girls is a thing of the past.
