Declare GBV a national emergency - SWAGAA
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M- Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA) has called upon government to declare Gender-Based Violence (GBV), a national emergency.
Speaking to Eswatini News, the organisation’s Communication Officer, Sakhile Dlamini said, the cases where spouses kill their partners were very alarming and disturbing.
The organisation has now made a call to the Deputy Prime Minister Themba Masuku, to urgently declare GBV a national emergency.
GBV falls under the portfolio of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office (DPMO), and Social Welfare department.
The communication officer has said that intimate partner violence (IPV) is a cycle, which means that once the violence starts - it may not end.
“There may be good and wonderful moments in between that get the victim wishing and thinking that such moments may last forever, however, that is only a ploy used by the perpetrator to keep their victim under their control. Survivors of IPV need to be able to spot the signs and pay attention to red flags, so that they can get out while they can. Men continue to murder women; but we have seen that our justice system is slow in holding them accountable. There are services available for people affected by IPV and we urge that people seek help and report as soon as they know,’ Dlamini said.
Dlamini mentioned that as GBV service providers they also need to do more in bridging the gap between clients/ survivors and the service uptake.
“This is not just up to service providers alone but in the creation of a relationship of trust and support between survivor’s
Cycle: Bridging: Committed:
ad service providers. We need to ensure that accessing help and services is doable and survivors are willing and confident in the process of the journey towards getting help and support,” Dlamini pointed out.
He went on to say that there are policies, laws and conventions that seek to protect women in eSwatini. She stated that the challenge is in implementation; where these are properly implemented, they act as a deterrent for would-be offenders.
“We need to ensure that the laws are put into effect and offenders are apprehended and sentenced timeously to serve their term in the full extent of the law. Important to note, however, is that in all these cases that we have seen; women get killed for either leaving or staying, which means that either way the outcome could have been the same. Their survival was never quite reliant,” Dlamini highlighted.
He noted that on the decisions they made and therefore, the problem is not really in the victims’ choice to stay or leave but the perpetrator’s decision to kill.
“We call upon the deputy prime minister to declare GBV a national emergency and give GBV issues the urgency that they demand,” Dlamini stated.
On the other hand, the people of Ngcoseni under the Ngwempisi Constituency have been busy in the past months as they were flooded with brutal incidents where spouses and lovers had murdered each other.
As a result, the Bucopho of the area under Ngwempisi, Simo Mabuza has said as a community they were very much disturbed as they had to bury people who had been killed under the GBV circumstances in the area.
Most recently, at Ngcoseni a woman was assaulted to death with a plank on her bed by her husband after a minor squabble at midnight.
Eswatini has also committed itself to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda 2030; SDG 5 aims to achieve gender equality and end all GBV by 2030. Eswatini has the highest prevalence of HIV in the world with 27.3 per cent of adults living with HIV. The perception of women as subordinate to men and resulting gender inequality has increased the vulnerability of women to HIV.
Impact of COVID-19:
The pandemic related restrictions substantially hampered the country’s effort in reducing GBV cases as there had been partial lockdowns since March 2020.
In the first month of implementation of movement restrictions, SWAGAA reported that the number of GBV cases had been doubled.
The deputy prime minister also divulged that the cases recorded had increased from 1 420 to 9 399 in nine months following restrictions. The DPM said that the increase in the cases was primarily caused by the containment of women and children in households with abusers, compromising their safety.
According to a report by the United Nations Human Rights Council, the confinement caused by the lockdown created real psychological stress on women and children and that families that did not experience gender-based violence before the virus, were now subjected to it.
Underreporting has also cited that there a significant issue for all types of GBV, arising from a variety of issues such as ignorance of reporting mechanisms, cultural barriers and a lack of protection systems. The Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence (SODV) Act contains no provisions which outline the structure for an effective response mechanisms for victims and there is no comprehensive government strategy in this regard.
SWAGAA identified that out of all the incidences of GBV only three per cent of cases were reported to the police; only seven per cent of women accessed counseling services and only 2.1 per cent of women accessed a clinic or hospital following the accident compared with 62.3 per cent who reported that they would have liked to access support. and Peoples Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol).