Muchinguri declares war against GBV

Tafadzwa Ndlovu Herald Reporter
Government is mulling ways of implementing the national Gender Based Violence (GBV) strategy launched in 2012 with statistics showing there is continuous increase of gender based violence cases in the country. National GBV Strategy 2012-2015 provides stakeholders with a framework which outlines areas where greater effort should be placed to address challenges in a more co-ordinated approach.

Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development Minister Oppah Muchinguri challenged stakeholders to come up with co-ordinated programmes that mainstreamed gender based violence issues.

She made the remarks on Friday in Harare when her ministry launched a national GBV committee, a team that would be in the forefront of co-ordinating the development of action plans to address GBV in the country.

“Instead of seeing reduction in the cases of GBV since we launched the GBV strategy in 2012, we are seeing an increase.
“We need to declare a war on GBV and start taking this issue seriously; that is why I called various stakeholders to deliberate this issue so that we will come up with ways to implement the national GBV strategy,” she said.

“The current GBV interventions in Zimbabwe have been largely fragmented and this has resulted in duplication of efforts, lack of synergies and lack of access to comprehensive services by survivors.

“I want to emphasise the need for every sector represented here to come up with sector-specific action plans in line with the national priorities as outlined in the GBV strategy.”

Minister Muchinguri said the meeting was prompted by the increasing cases of GBV and her ministry was working out ways to reach the zero tolerance target.

“My ministry is concerned with the escalating cases of GBV. This meeting is also a response to the active debate in Parliament during the past two weeks whereby Members of Parliament clearly called for mandatory sentencing of at least 30 years for rape cases and more deterrent sentences on GBV,” said the minister.

Participants at the meeting included representatives from various churches, tertiary institutions, workplaces, chiefs and traditional leaders.

A senior lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe said there was a need for strengthening structures in the school’s curriculum that mainstreamed gender issues.