In a public statement released this week, the embassy of the United States in Gaborone says it will increase its support for activities that address gender based violence.
“The U.S. Embassy is proud of its strong partnership with the Government and people of Botswana in many areas, and it will continue to work closely with the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs and other stakeholders to combat gender-based violence in Botswana.”
This is a strong statement of intent from the Embassy.
“The U.S. Mission in Botswana is increasing its support for activities that address gender-based violence. The United States supports a five-year project to improve the livelihoods of households for vulnerable adolescents, especially girls and women. The U.S. is also funding a civil society strengthening project to build the capacity of local NGOs to design gender sensitive programs,” adds the statement from the embassy.
Gender based violence is a scourge that continues to blight all progress that humanity has made in this era of civilisation.
As a country Botswana has made significant progress when compared with those countries where we often hear that girl children are killed at birth simply because they are girls.
We also are much ahead of those countries where we often hear that women are gang raped and beaten to death because there is a traditional belief that men involved in such heinous crimes somehow become better human beings thereafter.
But this is not to say there is no work to do. In fact to the contrary, there is a lot of work to do.
Many women and girls continue to suffer abuse that is physical, emotional and indeed psychological simply on account of their gender.
This we have to address.
As a people we have to do away with those traditions, customs and cultures that even vaguely suggest that women and girls are less human than their male counterparts.
The subtleties that encourage a belief system that there is anything wrong with being a woman or a girl should be discarded because they are on many occasions at the core of a socialization system that brings up people who believe in the chauvinistic mentality that to show manhood one has to belittle the other gender.
Women and girls make over half of our total population as a nation.
Just how can we be a complete and strong nation when we somehow still condone a belief system that demeans and belittles over half of our population?
While we welcome the involvement of the Ministry of Labour and indeed the American embassy in efforts to fight this scourge, we want to point out that more meaningful strides will only be achieved if we start it from our families.
Parents should teach young boys to cherish their sisters and to always value them as equals.
We want to urge parents to socialize young boys in a culture that from an early age teaches them to respect their sisters and treat them with the honour that they expect for themselves.
It is only when families  start  accepting these core values as their primary responsibilities that  the commendable and pioneering  job by the Ministry of Labour and the American Embassy could yield lasting and indeed widespread results.
