“I dedicate this Nobel Prize to women of all countries in the world, harmed by conflict and facing violence every day… To the survivors from all over the world, I would like to tell you that through this prize, the world is listening to you and refusing to remain indifferent. The world refuses to sit idly in the face of your suffering. – 2018 Nobel Peace Prize co-laureate Denis Mukwege (Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad were jointly awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for “their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict”)

There is a curse hanging over Africa, it is called gender-based violence. And that curse is holding back the economic, social and cultural development of the continent. Forcing half of Africa to live in fear for their lives, prosperity and sanity. If Africa is to develop, if Africa is to end poverty and provide a decent quality of life to all her peoples it cannot be done when women are regularly brutalised and oppressed.

My conception of development is that it means a life with dignity for all. At the core of dignity is security, the security of individuals, communities and their property. Thus, for Africa to develop we must end violence against women to ensure the security of all, and national policy has a critical role to play. First, we must understand gender-based violence and crucially ensure that women have a visible, and powerful say in how our societies are governed. Secondly, over the short term, policy must provide for properly trained and funded police, courts and prosecutors who can more effectively deter, detect, investigate and prosecute violence against women. Over the medium to long term, policy can be used to educate our children and young men in a way that engages them with positive conceptions of masculinity and femininity.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of the policies that governments could and should pursue to tackle a difficult and painful issue. Rather, it is merely, as always suggestions and thoughts that I hope will contribute to a discourse that will engage with, and help end gender-based violence in Africa.

Facing up to the truth

The first step too solving any problem is acknowledging and understanding it. Thus, the first policy is that governments across the continent must acknowledge that violence against women is a critical problem. It is only when you acknowledge a problem that you can marshal the resources and moral standing to deal with it. This is what was required when the AIDS epidemic swept through the continent, it was only when governments got their heads out of the sand and acknowledged the problem, did we start to slow its devastation. And the evidence, around the continent, shows that violence against women is like aids, a social, cultural and economic disaster.

• A recent report in Ghana looking at the social and economic consequences of violence against women lays the consequences out in stark detail. The report found that; 43% of women with partners or spouses had experienced abuse in their relationships in the last 12 months. 24% of women reported experiencing workplace violence, and 18% of women have experienced violence in public spaces.
• In South Africa, the national statistics agency reported in June 2018 that the murder rate for women increased by 117% between 2015 and 2017 and the number of women who experienced sexual offences increased by 53%.
• The 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) reported 45% of women in Kenya have experienced physical violence since the age of 15.
• A UN report showed that Lesotho has the highest rates of female homicide at 18.9 per 100,000.
• A study by the ministry of women’s affairs and social development and the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) in Nigeria found out that 28% of Nigerian women aged 25-29 have experienced some form of physical violence since age 15, in a country of 194 million people, even this 23% figure translates into millions of women suffering physical and sexual violence.

This is a crisis. Economically, for example, the report from Ghana lays bare the high economic costs violence against women. The report estimates that means the Ghanaian economy loses US$ 286 million (0.4% of GDP) in lost productivity alone. However, gender-based violence doesn’t just affect the economy its impacts are social and intergenerational. Gender violence deepens poverty by forcing many women to spend what little disposable income they have on medical care as a result of violence, or to miss work and the opportunities therein. Millions of school days per year are missed due to children’s exposure to the violence inflicted on their mothers. Violence against women is used to oppress women’s participation in civil, political and cultural spaces, a crucial tool that the parade of bad leaders that pervade the continent use to keep themselves in power.

Our nations, their economies, governance, society, culture and our children suffer. Violence against women is an epidemic that impoverishes all of Africa in multiple ways and needs to be stopped.

So, when we have acknowledged the problem of violence against women, we need to understand what causes it and thus start formulating the policies needed to stop it. That means making women’s voices heard.

Visibility and real power

The first policy we must pursue is engaging women not only through surveys and studies but also ensuring that there are civil, political and social spaces where women’s voices cannot only be heard but have real power, that can actively shape and implement the policy responses to gender-based violence.

This means ensuring that there is engaged public participation. By engaged I mean actively pursuing women’s views rather than just seeking the submission of their thoughts. It means ensuring that on the committees, working groups and teams that end up writing the policies, regulations and laws there is gender equity. It means actively pursuing gender equity in our politics, and that will likely require explicitly reserving seats for women in parliament and government as Rwanda does. I am personally in favour of having gender equity in political representation (that half of all representatives must be women). However, in a continent with as much diversity as ours, there will be no blanket solution that works in each country, society and community, the only way that context can be integrated into the policy responses is through the participation of the people in those communities, particularly women in shaping those responses.

Short term – enforcement

In the short term, policies have to focus on deterring violence against women, enforcing the law and providing the means for victims to heal. This would entail a number of measures but at the forefront is law enforcement. All African states have some form of criminal code, and many have gender equity laws. However, their enforcement has been lacking.

African governments should explore the creation of specialised domestic violence and sexual assault units. It is not an outlandish suggestion most African police have specialised anti-theft, criminal investigation, traffic, riot, anti-terror etc. units. The creation of a police unit that is specifically trained to investigate and prosecute violence against women and sexual harassment. Not only increasing the rate at which perpetrators are caught and jailed for their crimes but also treat the victims with respect making it more likely that women will actually report crimes.

Second, are the courts. Judges and magistrates need to be trained to handle gender violence and sexual assault cases, and not simply dismiss them on account of social or cultural norms.

Third, are prosecutors. Funding public prosecutors who are specifically detailed to prosecute domestic abuse, sexual assault and harassment, workplace harassment, child abuse, and female genital mutilation. Ensuring that court cases don’t get lost in the complexities of the criminal justice system and give the victims a greater chance at justice. These are short term policies, that, if properly implemented could have an immediate impact. Deterring crime and giving women justice.

Long term – education and culture

In the long term, simply improving the ability of law enforcement and the courts to investigate and prosecute these crimes won’t be enough. We must address the aspects of our culture, society and politics that enable violence against women.

Over the long-term education is the key. We can liberate our children, especially boys, from the societal expectations and cultural norms that perpetuate gender-based violence. By integrating gender, positive masculinity and respect into our school curriculums (as they have done in this school in Rwanda). Comprehensive gender education, where young men and women are not only taught how to respect each other but can engage frankly with negative aspects of society and culture that they themselves have encountered will help, over the long term, to get rid of the norms that make people think its alright to hit your wife, for a lecturer to harass his female students, or try and bully a female colleague at work into going out with you. Across the continent, there are a number of countries looking to review and reform their education curriculums to make them more applicable to the fast-evolving global economy and society in which we live. One of the aspects they should be adding to curricula is positive gender education. Once again it is important to reiterate, that local economic, social and cultural content must be integrated into positive gender education, where the causes of gender-based violence in those communities and countries are not only studied but are also specifically integrated into positive gender education curricula.

Conclusion

Violence against women hurts all of us, and in doing so it hinders the development of our continent. Development requires not just growing economies and building new roads but improvement in the lives of all African’s. Part of that is the safety and security of all citizens, for both men and women. Violence against women disempowers half of our citizens. It makes us poorer, politically socially and culturally. It hobbles our economies. And it shackles the next generation, scarring them emotionally, hampering them economically and perpetuating the culture that enables violence against women.

This need not be the case. Our governments must acknowledge that violence against women is a threat to Africa and make sure that Africa’s women are at the forefront of crafting the responses and policy initiatives from the government can make a real difference.