As one of the measures for halving gender violence by 2015, GenderLinks Botswana and the Women’s Affairs Department (WAD) will be undertaking a nationwide research study called Gender Based Violence (GBV) Indicators Project.
By undertaking such a project, the two gender activistivism organizations, took a leaf from the SADC Gender and Development Protocol, which aims to reduce the current levels of gender violence by 50 percent by the year 2015.They hope that the project will produce a high quality academically rigorous but accessible and understandable study that will lead to policy changes when it comes to resource allocation for gender based violence.
The other objective of the project is to strengthen the National Action Plans to end Gender Based Violence in the countries where the project will be implemented.
According to Roos Van Dorp, Programme Officer of Gender links Botswana, the project is an initiative for measuring the extent, effects and response to GBV in the SADC region. It’s been said that GBV in the SADC region, particularly ‘violence against women, continues to be one of the most common and serious human rights violations occurring in the SADC region.’
Keabonye Ntsabane, co-ordinator of Gender Links Botswana, has revealed that they intend to include men in their research to understand the issues from all perspectives because men have been excluded in the past and no solution has been found.
“Men have complained in the past about how they are sidelined, it’s not that we don’t listen to them, we have been thin on the ground and we therefore had to prioritise, women were at the top of the list for those most affected by GBV therefore we had to attend to them first,” said Ntsabane.
Van Dorp revealed that the upcoming project will comprise of 6 research methodologies, namely the Prevalence and Attitudes Survey, Qualitative Research, Administrative Data Analysis; the Burden of GBV on society, Political Discourse Analysis and Media Monitoring of GBV.
Other stakeholders involved in the project will be the Central Statistics Office, Sociology Department of the University of Botswana; the police and the Attorney General’s office and the Centre for Applied Research that has considerable experience with conducting household surveys.┬á
