Fight against gender-based violence: Casamance closes ranks

Faced with the persistence of gender-based violence, those involved in the fight now want to combine their efforts to better prevent, protect and support victims.

ZIGUINCHOR– The scattered fight must now be replaced by a concerted response. In Ziguinchor, actors involved in the prevention and treatment of gender-based violence (GBV) have decided to strengthen their coordination to provide a more coherent response to victims and survivors.

This is the whole point of the meeting of the Regional Committee for Harmonization and Coordination of Interventions in GBV, held yesterday at the initiative of the Women’s Platform for Peace in Casamance (Pfpc), as part of the project “Strengthening the power of action of women and girls affected by the conflict in Casamance”, in the regions of Sédhiou and Ziguinchor.

Around the regional governor, this framework brings together the Ministry of Family, the PFPC, UN Women as well as several services and structures involved in the fight against GBV: justice, health, firefighters, law shop and young girls’ organizations. The objective of these coordinated interventions is clear: avoid duplication, pool resources and create more synergies for greater efficiency.

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“Until then, the different actors worked in a fairly dispersed manner, which complicated the collection of data and sometimes affected their reliability. This new framework will make it possible to harmonize tools and methods in order to improve the quality of work in the field,” explained Léonie Gomis, vice-president of the PFPC.

For her, the urgency is also to better support victims, whose needs often go beyond legal support alone. “We must establish real synergy between actors to reduce gender-based violence, because the health and psychological support of victims remains particularly delicate,” she stressed.

Beyond coordination, awareness remains an essential lever. “We can no longer continue to stigmatize people who already bear the weight of violence. We must intensify awareness-raising actions in order to prevent these acts and ensure that GBV is eradicated in the Ziguinchor region,” she insisted.

Through this new framework, the actors intend to build a more accessible, more harmonized and better quality response, capable of preventing violence, protecting survivors and sustainably strengthening support services in Casamance.