Govenment fails to achieve over 50% of targets to combat gender-based violence

A file picture of people protesting at the Union Buildings last year against gender-based violence. Picture: Jacques Naude/African News Agency(ANA)

A file picture of people protesting at the Union Buildings last year against gender-based violence. Picture: Jacques Naude/African News Agency(ANA)

Published Apr 22, 2021

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Pretoria - The Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) has found that the government has failed to achieve over 50% of the targets set in its emergency plans to combat the scourge of gender-based violence and femicide in the country.

The commission revealed the outcome of their review and assessment of the government’s six-month Emergency Action Response Plan (ERAP), initiated by President Cyril Ramaphosa on September 18 2019, during a virtual sitting.

According to the commission’s chairperson Tamara Mathebula, their overall assessment of the government’s plan had found that only 21.25% of the targets were fully achieved, with 15% being partially achieved.

Overall however Mathebula said that they found up to 63.75% of the 80 targets set for the period of six months had not been achieved at all.

During October 2019 the government’s planned interventions identified five key areas to focus on namely to ensure access to justice for victims of crime and survivors, and for there to be a change in the norms and behaviours through high-level prevention efforts.

For stakeholders to be able to urgently respond to victims and survivors of gender-based violence, whilst also ensuring that accountability and architecture to adequately respond to the gender-based violence was in place.

Lastly for interventions that facilitate economic opportunities for addressing women’s economic vulnerability to be prioritised.

Mathebula said however they found several key operational challenges that undermined the implementation of the initiative’s plans and even led to many important targets not being achieved.

These included challenges with the effective co-ordination of departmental activities across the focus areas highlighted and that specified targets were not based on clear and rigorous assessments of the current institutional capacity needs of the responsible government departments.

They also found that there was a greater emphasis on observable outputs without clear linkages to the longer-term outcomes on combating the scourge of violence against women and children.

There was also inadequate provision for systematic, ongoing monitoring and evaluation of progress as well as weak mechanisms for post-implementation impact assessment.

Pretoria News

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