| HOW many women have been beaten, murdered or ill-treated in different ways during the course of this year in your country?
Judging by the number of headlines coming from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, among others, of women who were raped and girl children who have been sexually abused and infected with HIV and AIDS it is not difficult to conclude that thousands, if not millions of women throughout the world have suffered some form of Gender Based Violence in their lives.
Many women have been beaten, killed, trampled on, chased out of homes, denied resources and left to raise children alone without any assistance. Many women have been denied jobs because they are women, or because they are pregnant and many of them have failed to access healthcare services or protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections like HIV because they lack empowerment.
India estimates it has ‘lost’ at least 20,000 girl children due to infanticide in the last year alone, because of the national preference for sons. Maternal mortality is a growing problem in many countries in the region, including South Africa. There are still young girls, who are failing to go to school because they are the “wrong sex” and much still needs to be done to raise awareness about GBV as a human rights issue at the local, national, regional and international levels.
The annual 16 Days of Activism Against GBV are fast approaching, beginning on November 25, which is the International Day Against Violence Against Women and running up to December 10, International Human Rights Day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasise that such violence is a violation of human rights.
This year’s theme is “Demanding Implementation, Challenging Obstacles: End Violence Against Women
Key Issues
· The 16-day period also highlights other significant dates including November 29, International Women Human Rights Defenders Day, and December 1, World AIDS Day.
· The media can use this period to make even more noise to governments and policy makers about the need to implement promises made to eliminate violence against women
· In countries where no laws to protect women from violence exist, the media should add its voice to lobbying for laws to be put in place. Where laws are in place, the media needs to let women from all sectors of society know about the existence of the laws and how they can use the law for their protection.
· Several activities are lined up for 16 Days in different countries. How can you get involved in some of them as the media?
· The 16-days period is a time for demanding accountability for promises and commitments made to women. Journalists need to be familiar with the commitments that have been made so they can follow through and see whether any progress has been made. One of the Millennium Development goals calls for gender equality and reducing maternal mortality. If women are still dying giving life, this needs to be challenged.
· According to the United Nations Population Fund there are 16 forms of GBV, among them the exploitation of domestic workers, female genital mutilation, sexual violence as a weapon of war, and child marriages. The media needs to find out more about these issues and educate their communities about them.
· The media needs to include the voices of survivors of domestic violence and highlight their experiences as well as showing how they have overcome it.
· The SADC Gender and Development protocol has been drafted, but has not yet been adopted; what does this mean and will the protocol assist in combating gender based violence?
· In Zimbabwe, the Domestic Violence Act is now operational; the media can utilise this opportunity to raise awareness and alert people that GBV is now a punishable offence. The media can also monitor if the act is being utilised by people at grassroots level and if not, why not.
Sources:
www.unfpa.org.16days
www.cwgl.rutger.edu
Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, the State University of New Jersey
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