Stop Trivialising Serious Issues

Monitor Editor | Monday September 10, 2018 11:52

There are several non-governmental organisations, which lobby against GBV, and of recent, a number of individuals have lashed out at some of these organisations, citing discrimination, specifically against men.  A recent tragedy where a young prisons officer was allegedly murdered by his girlfriend in Serowe had a lot of people talking. 

While some were showing support for the family of the young man during their time of grief, others were on another level. Some women decided to defend the suspect, making assumptions that the deceased must have done something to the suspect for her to resort to fatal violence. While many seem to mistake GBV for being violence against women and girls only, it is not! 

It is violence against any gender, and it should be condemned at all levels, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator!  GBV can be defined as ‘violence directed at an individual based on his or her sex, gender identity, or expression of socially defined norms of masculinity and femininity’. Nothing in that definition suggests that the murder of a man or boy-child is less of a crime or that it not regarded as gender based violence. 

It does, and it also deserves the same attention just as GBV where the victims are women and children. Disappointedly, some women, decided to get into defensive mode and minimise the grievous crime committed, just because the victim is a man.  That is shameful, especially, at a time when the country is faced with the serious scourge that is GBV. 

It should be tackled from both angles.  Each and every human-being has a right to life, which is protected by the law, and this right is for both men and women, and girls and boys, so it should be nothing that suggests that if violence is committed against a certain gender it carries more weight than the one committed by the other. 

Yes, some NGOs and lobby groups, tend to concentrate more of their efforts on violence against women and girls, but that is only because statistics show that they are the ones who mostly fall victim to GBV, and also that they are more vulnerable. A lot of information on GBV has been disseminated to different communities in an effort to curb GBV, but the society also needs to do its part in ensuring that the fight against GBV is realised

If we continue to make irresponsible comments about issues of GBV, we are basically digressing further from solving the problem. Let us come together as a nation of both men and women, and girls and boys, to eliminate this evil called GBV.