News | 29 Oct 2024
Last week, NACOSA attended the Sexual Violence Research Initiative Forum in Cape Town where over 1,500 delegates from across the globe came together to learn and share the latest research on tackling sexual and gender based violence. Visitors from Geneva to Sudan, Canada to Myanmar, Togo to Haiti, came past the NACOSA exhibition stand to engage and take our short survey on moving the needle on gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF). And while we are all working in vastly different contexts, many of the issues we are facing are the same.
Over half of the people who completed our survey, Moving the Needle on GBVF, think that current programmes are having an impact on reducing GBVF in communities and 37% are noticing small shifts. Nine percent are not seeing any progress.
HIGH IMPACT PROGRAMMING
Common themes emerged when we asked visitors to our stand what programme changes they thought would have the most impact on reducing GBVF. Mental health literacy featured, “Deliberately linking mental health to GBV programs”, as well as school-based initiatives: “National school based prevention programming.”
Some respondents felt more work needed to be done on understanding perpetration of GBV:
“More involvement of perpetrators in trying to understand how and why they perpetrate and then try to implement intervention from a young age in children affected or not.”
“While empowering communities and survivors, a need to engage potential perpetrators.”
Others highlighted working with community, traditional and religious leaders to shift norms:
“Programs that work with traditional authorities to empower them will do away with GBVF.”
“Helping community leaders and civil society organization understand how systemic change happens and where their programs and actions fit in.”
URGENT ATTENTION NEEDED
Almost half (47%) of the people who took the survey felt that community-based prevention programmes were most urgently needed to reduce GBVF. Justice system reform (16%) and better mental health literacy (14%) were also selected as needing attention. Nine percent thought that economic strengthening for affected people was important.
INNOVATIONS FOR SCALE-UP
A number of innovations in prevention or response programming were mentioned including economic empowerment strengthening, survivor-centred and trauma-informed programming and community-based mental health. Other interesting contributions included:
“Awareness of community and safety audits in facilities and communities.”
“Easier access to get PEP and EC without going to the hospital.”
One respondent spoke to NACOSA’s core mission when they said:
“Capacity building, community engagement, working well together, true integration of SRHR, HIV prevention and response with SGBV.”
EVERYONE HAS A ROLE TO PLAY
NACOSA’s message at SVRI 2024 was that everyone has a role to play. It takes a village to end GBVF and it was a global village that come together to support this message in Cape Town.