Let’s halt gender-based violence now

This year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Campaign kicks-off today and will run until December 10, which is the International Human Rights Day.

It is under the theme ‘From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Make School Safe for All’.

Also dubbed ‘Orange Day Campaign’, it is marked annually as a wake-up call for an end to gender-based violence and to demand accountability on the part of policymakers and community members to end violence, discrimination and inequality.

As we commemorate International Women’s Day, we look back at previous years of shocking crimes of violence against women and girls.

Statistics from the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service reveal that between 2010 and 2014, 5,794 defilement cases, 1,603 rape cases and 21,299 assault cases were perpetrated against women and girls.

On the other hand, the unit recorded 20 defilement case, 3,556 assault cases and zero rape cases against men.

Gender-based violence is a global problem, and gender-based inequality, exclusion and discrimination are at the heart of gender-based violence.

In Ghana, reasons for beating up women can be as trivial as not serving meat to a husband.

Not a day passes without horrendous tales of a woman being battered – or killed – by her partner.

It is a season to remember victims of gender violence, who live with the scars of an evil that refuses to go away.

So deeply entrenched is the problem in our society that it defies confinement to some two weeks of a year.

The need to stem gender-based violence emerges from the fact that it carries enormous costs, ranging from missed work hours, treating injuries, treatment of sexually-transmitted infections in cases of rape, miscarriage and time spent at home caring for victims.

Bearing in mind that gender-based violence has physical, emotional, sexual and economic dimensions, with the perpetrators being listed as intimate partners, relatives and workmates, it is time concerted efforts were made to stem the evil that is no respecter of women, be they MPs, judges and magistrates, or even media women.

Gender-based violence has close links to poverty. Recent studies on the global recession show that economic downturns and increasing poverty can trigger an increase in domestic violence.

All women and girls have a right to live free of violence. Violence against women is neither inevitable nor acceptable; it is a violation of human rights, for which the country is accountable.

Violence against women, which is fuelled by gender-based inequality, exclusion and discrimination, is a constraint to sustainable human development.