Violence Against Women
Source: UNESCO
The third and last workshop of a project covering three countries in West Africa (the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal) is organized in Banjul, the Gambia from 20-21 February 2013. The workshop will validate the results of several case studies on the social movement of women and violence against women carried out under the supervision of UNESCO’s Regional Office in Dakar.
With the ultimate goal of achieving the implementation of a plan of action to transform the lives of abused women, this two-day workshop, organized in cooperation with the National Commission for UNESCO of Gambia, will bring together more than thirty participants, mainly policy makers, researchers and representatives from civil society.
It will finalize the results of two case studies launched in 2011 within the framework of a joint project of UNESCO, UN Women and CODESRIA, conducted in collaboration with civil society organizations, according to the method of SWOT analysis that identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a category of people in a given area: in this case, the social movement of women and gender-based violence.
Accelerate social change
“Based on the results obtained in Gambia, we plan to have policy recommendations that can be implemented quickly on the ground. It will be in the form of a "political document" that will be officially transmitted to the national authorities at the end of the workshop,” says Marema Toure-Thiam, responsible for Social and Human Sciences at UNESCO Dakar.
The aim is, Toure-Thiam adds, that the proposed actions will aim to contribute to the eradication of gender-based violence by strengthening skills and capacities at the national level.
The idea is to accelerate, monitor and guide social change with a view to establish a genuine equality between men and women in The Gambia, while at the same time promoting female leadership in socio-economic, political and cultural areas.
Similar studies in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau
UNESCO Dakar has conducted similar studies in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau which have both been validated. The three studies will constitute a representative sample of common and specific mechanisms related to the social movement of women and gender-based violence in West Africa.
The validation workshops of the studies conducted on Senegal and Guinea-Bissau took place, respectively, on 2 and 3 October 2012, in Dakar, and on 27 and 28 November 2012 in Bissau.