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Africa News afrol News
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Africa News afrol News
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Existing measures to protect women and children against violence have proved inadequate, ineffective and, in some cases, biased against the victims. - If you go to any Southern African Development Community (SADC) country and pick up a newspaper, listen to the radio, or switch on television, whether it's just a case of violence against women and children being reported on, or of the problem escalating, the fact is that it is in the top category of human rights violations, said Bore Motsamai, Lesotho's principal secretary for communications. He was opening the Media Training Workshop on Violence Against Women in Maseru, the Basotho capital, on Monday. Information floating around makes sad reading. Throughout the SADC region, women's access to land, livestock, credit and other productive resources are limited. Men still predominate at the top of the occupational hierarchy in all countries. All but one country in the region have signed, ratified or acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. SADC governments are also all signatories to the region's own Gender and Development Declaration, which has an addendum on the Prevention and Eradication of Violence Against Women and Children. Yet only two countries - South Africa and Mauritius - have comprehensive legislation on violence against women. The rest have drafts which have remained just that for the past three years. These are among the issues that participants to this week's (Dec 10-15) SADC Conference on the Prevention and Eradication on Violence Against Women and Children will be addressing. The inter-governmental conference has been convened to review progress on what governments have done since they signed the addendum to the 1997 Declaration on Gender and Development by SADC heads of state or governments in 1998, one year after this event. In the declaration and the addendum, SADC heads of state committed themselves, and their respective countries, to take urgent measures to prevent and deal with the increasing levels of violence against women. The addendum requires SADC countries to report every two years on progress towards achieving this objective. This week's conference, convened by the SADC Gender Unit, is the first such forum for governments to account since the Durban conference in 1998 where the addendum was conceived. - We want to know which countries have moved toward achieving the good goals, explained Christine Warioba, programme officer with the SADC Gender Unit. The addendum provides for the formulation of regional policies, programmes and mechanisms to enhance the security and empowerment of women and, of children and for monitoring of their implementation. The conference brings together ministers for gender in the region, media practitioners and non-governmental organisations and follows the Durban meeting which agreed on a reporting framework that breaks down the different types of gender violence, including sexual harassment, domestic violence rape, women in conflict and femicide. Although a full analysis of the reports will be available at the end of the conference, notable areas of progress has been registered in the formulation of specific legislation for combating gender-based violence. Mauritius and South Africa have both enacted comprehensive domestic violence acts that open the door to greater reporting of the problem and a more sensitive response by the criminal justice system. It is the hope of participants that the conference will highlight the gaps and help formulate a Programme of Action within which to give effect to the addendum. - The conference gives an opportunity to member states to take stock of achievements, obstacles and challenges that they have experienced in the last two years, says Stella Makanya of the Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILSAF). "The review also gives a chance for member states to showcase their best practices." - A look at the status of member states implementation of the addendum is not rosy. Only two of the member states whose reports were reviewed, South Africa and Mauritius, have enacted legislation to deal specifically with domestic violence, notes Makanya. "The rest have no legislation on domestic violence in particular. Some, (Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) have draft bills that are still going through the process of becoming law, while others have interpreted constitutional provisions and amended existing laws to cover issues of domestic violence," said Makanya. Makanya regrets that in some of these countries, physical violence and battering in the home falls under the laws relating to common assault. More disheartening for Makanya is that only Namibia and Malawi have constitutional provisions that make ratified international and regional instruments automatically applicable under domestic law. In other countries, they remain of persuasive authority, thus limiting their implementation. This underscores the need to popularise the addendum at the national level; among government ministries and departments as well as civil society groups responsible for implementing programmes on violence against women and children. Indeed most of the 35 journalists attending the parallel media training workshop admitted to seeing the addendum for the first time yesterday. Those who had not seen it expressed sadness about only seeing it two years later. The Gender and Development Declaration was "signed in my own country, Malawi, but I am only seeing it for the first time. It's really sad," said Moffat Kondowe, a journalist with Malawi Broadcasting Corporation said. Motsamai called on the media to play a pro-active role. "All too often, the media has been seen as passive observers, rather than active participants and partners in the critical issues of our time." The media training workshop will run parallel to, and will be closely integrated with the SADC conference by Lewis Machipisa, IPS
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