After a year of implementing strategies for dealing with gender-based violence, JGEN Senegal Women Global Entrepreneurship, the actors carried out advocacy in order to get decision-makers and the community to “act for women and girls”. Yesterday, Friday June 28, these associations advocated for the inclusion of a budget line housed within a ministry.
The lack of data on gender-based violence (GBV) remains the major equation for stakeholders working on the issue. Despite numerous awareness campaigns, the community is struggling to escape its muse. The only data available is recorded in the registers of the Defense and Security Forces or even the support units for victims of this violence.
At the level of the Senegalese government, large-scale actions are very limited in this support. An observation that led JGEN Senegal, Women Global Entrepreneurship to advocate in order to bring decision-makers, the community, through the campaign, to “act for women and girls”. A campaign that began last year.
Thus, to mark the end of the said campaign, Maïmouna Astou Yade, Executive Director of JGEN Senegal, argued yesterday, Friday June 28, 2024, during a press conference, that the data problem is still a reality.
“After a year of activities, we are at the end of this adventure to share the results obtained. To provide more data on gender-based violence, we have advocated to women, but also to the State in order to position a budget line for people who are victims of this violence,” she said.
She considered that “the constraints that block the support, through various programs, are often the absence of global data based on gender. All the actors who work there have this problem. And the State knows that it is necessary to invest in the issue. But, when we do not have reliable data, it is difficult to get out of it. We know that there is reference data, but that is not enough; we must go beyond this problem to have global data.”
This campaign “act for women and girls” is taking place in eight (8) countries in the sub-region. According to the organizers of this meeting in Dakar, it is part of the “Foundation” project, also called “Amplifying the voices of young women in West Africa”.
“Equipop is committed to supporting the capacities of young feminists in West Africa to take action, and in particular to developing their capacities to bring the voices of women and girls in their countries, particularly those in vulnerable situations, to national and regional decision-making bodies at the regional level,” the press release states.
And to add: “for this, Equipop facilitates and supports a regional advocacy process in favor of SRHR and against GBV, implemented by West African feminists gathered during annual regional meetings.”
Remember that as part of this campaign, in each country, two advocacy and communication focal points were collectively designated to work on the dynamics. The focal points of the 8 countries have written a Regional Advocacy Strategy aimed at achieving the objective, namely influencing national public authorities by December 2024, for the inclusion of a budget line in the finance laws of the 8 countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, dedicated to the establishment and/or improvement of systems for collecting quantitative and qualitative data relating to Gender-Based and Sexual Violence.
Denise ZAROUR MEDANG
