Resolution calls on all sectors to End it Now!

The national conference to promote linking, learning and action on the state response to gender based violence (GBV), the interaction between HIV and GBV and the impact of GBV on young people – End it Now! Together in Response to GBV and HIV – issued the following resolution:

The assembled delegates,

Recognising the extent and severity of GBV and HIV in South Africa,

Understanding the links between GBV and HIV and the burden that falls particularly on young women and girls,

Acknowledging the importance of a strong collaboration between government actors, local and international donors and civil society organisations,

Celebrating the very real success of current best practise multi stakeholder models at alleviating the extreme suffering of survivors of GBV, supporting recovery, and ensuring access to justice and to health,

Affirming that changing patriarchal attitudes and norms associated with GBV and HIV is a necessary intervention, and

Convinced of the preventive role of psychosocial care in ensuring a decrease in both GBV and HIV,

1. Requests all organisations represented at this conference to intensify their efforts to lobby state role players to place services aimed at survivors of GBV that include access to HIV testing and Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) high on the political agenda;

2. Encourages all organisations and practitioners in the sector to intensify their efforts to work together and share best practice models for delivering services that deliver tangible outcomes to survivors of GBV;

3. Encourages organisations in the sector to facilitate and support conversations and dialogues on the issue of changing harmful social attitudes, norms and behaviours that promote GBV at every level of society.

4. Urges increased solidarity between organisations in the sector in engaging in taking collective action to mobilise support for services to survivors of GBV;

5. Calls on the South African government to ensure formal policies, plans and budgets and a multi departmental approach to ensure the ongoing delivery of psycho-social services to survivors of GBV that include access to HIV testing and PEP; and

6. Calls on both foreign and local donors, specifically AFSA and NACOSA as grant managers and the Global Fund to continue funding the ongoing delivery of services to survivors of GBV that include access to HIV testing and PEP beyond March 2019.

For more from the conference visit www.enditnow.co.za