Sonke Gender Justice in collaboration with Mosaic Training, Service & Healing Centre (Mosaic) hosted a two-day national stakeholder dialogue themed “From Policy to Accountability: Challenges and Opportunities in Addressing Intimate Partner Violence in South Africa” from the 20th to the 21st of April in Johannesburg. The forum brought together participants from various civil society organisations across the country, to share ideas on how to best address intimate partner violence
Reports show that worldwide 27 percent of women and girls aged 15 or older have either experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence and in South Africa, the figure is double. One of the objectives of the dialogue was to stress the need to shift from a policy-centred approach to addressing intimate partner violence to a more robust shared accountability framework. Amanda Mgimeti, Project officer for the Human Rights and Advocacy programme at Hoedspruit Training Trust says the dialogue was an eye opener ‘’the presentations were able to clarify some of the questions I had, we learned about laws that apply when handling cases of gender based violence and some of the intervention programmes available, this was beneficial and I will definitely implement some of best practices learned here’’.
The dialogue held robust discussions and group work activities focusing on collaboration and partnerships to better address intimate partner violence as well capacitating participants on how to hold government accountable.
