October 24th (AMSP/CGTN) – – Cape Town has been hosting the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Forum, where over 1,500 researchers, activists and survivors are uniting to tackle this crisis head on.
Gender-based violence remains a challenge in South Africa and across the globe. Thus, voices are being raised for change and justice, a check in Cape Town by CGTN has revealed.
The SVRI forum is a global platform aimed at ending gender-based violence. In a packed auditorium, in a unified voice, 1,500 people – researchers, activists and survivors – came together to say “No more”.
“We can reduce and prevent violence. It’s not something that you need to wait necessarily for generations. And I think we have more and more evidence to push in that direction, really,” said Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno, Founding Member of Sexual Violence Research Initiative.
” We’re providing a platform to really ensure that the work, the learning from communities, from researchers and survivors around the world aren’t just staying there, but they’re really filtering up into global spaces where the power does sit and that we do disrupt those power inequities and let them have opportunity to share what they need, ” added Elizabeth Dartnall, Executive Director of Sexual Violence Research Initiative.
Among the voices, there is Tarana Burke, founder of the #Me Too movement, which sparked a worldwide campaign against sexual violence. ” We have been trying to figure out ways to confront sexual and gender-based violence for just centuries. So there is always more that can be done. But there is so much that has been done. And I think what the hashtag did was catalyze this momentum that had been already growing. This is a movement about everyday people. It’s a movement about healing and about action. And as long as we keep that focus and know that the work is being done, the movement will go on and on forever, ” she told CGTN.
For some survivors, the trauma of gender-based violence becomes a lifelong burden. One artist, herself a rape survivor, uses art to channel her pain.
“I think the enormity of it all, thinking when I started this project, was our stats for last year was 3,800 women being murdered. That is, every 2.3 hours, we’ve got a victim. For me, the only way I could help, for not feeling absolutely hopeless in this huge thing, is advocacy, is spreading the awareness of how big this problem really is. So what I’ve done is, I’ve taken the names of all the women and the children who were murdered in gender-based violence, and I’ve embroidered each of their names on a piece of fabric, ” disclosed Gender-based Violence Survivor and Embroidery Artist Nell-Louise Pollock.
Part of the answer to end GBV researchers believe lies with educating and nurturing boys and men. ” I do think that engaging boys early on in conversations about respect and consent and the humanity of women and girls is key.If a quarter of women in the world have experienced violence from a male partner, if a third have experienced some form of sexual harassment, if one in ten children have experienced sexual violence, this is not small scale stuff. So I think we’re here because of that audacity of saying we have to think at scale. Boys and men need to be part of the size of that solution, ” Gary Barker, President and CEO of Equimondo pointed out.
There is still much work to be done but as these initiatives take shape, the hope is that they will pave the way for safer communities and more effective prevention strategies worldwide.
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