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Gambia hosts workshop on violence against women in West Africa
From 20 to 21 February, Gambia will host the third and last workshop of a project on violence against women in West Africa covering 3 countries: Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal. The workshop to be held in Banjul will validate the results of several case studies on the social movement of women and violence against women with the ultimate goal of achieving the implementation of a plan of action to transform the lives of abused women.
Organized in cooperation with the National Commission for UNESCO of Gambia, the event will bring together more than thirty participants, mainly policy makers, researchers and representatives from civil society.
Launched in 2011 within the framework of a joint project of UNESCO, UN Women and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the project will culminate in the finalization of the results of two case studies conducted in collaboration with civil society organizations, according to the method of SWOT analysis. This type of analysis 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.
Based on the results of these studies conducted in Gambia, policy recommendations, that can be implemented quickly on the ground, will be formulated in the form of a "political document" that will be officially transmitted to the national authorities at the end of the workshop.
Thus, relying on scientific data, taking into account the experience of the populations concerned, the proposed actions 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 this country, while at the same time promoting female leadership in socio-economic, political and cultural areas.
In the framework of the same project led by UNESCO’s Office in Dakar, similar studies have been conducted in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau in order to achieve the implementation of concrete measures at the national level, while obtaining 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.
