LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-A dialogue meeting for various stakeholders was held in Malawi’s Capital Lilongwe on Thursday in order to identify priority advocacy issues and come up with a plan of action on addressing the ever increasing violence against women and girls in the country.
The meeting was organized by the Tithetse Nkhanza Program in partnership with the Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare.
Tithetse nkhanza, a violence against women and girls prevention and response program, is being jointly implemented by SD Direct, Coffey International and Plan International and is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID).
In her remarks, Team Leader for the Program, Grace Malera, described the dialogue meeting as important because it enabled stakeholders to come up with strategic approaches of addressing violence against women and girls.
“We want interventions requiring advocacy and influencing so that things can change for the better and relevant duty bearers can begin to be held accountable on women and girls welfare issues,” said Malera.
She added that the meeting re-examined the interventions that have already been implemented in order to identify the areas that need to be improved.
“We want an action plan which is not just on paper. We want an action plan which has the input of experts and will be funded in its implementation to achieve our goals. We will monitor and evaluate the plan so that work must be seen to be really done,” she said.
According to the 2015 Health Demographic Survey, 20% of women and girls in Malawi are subjected to physical violence and 3% face sexual violence.
Malera notes that such violence is exarcerbated by what she described as entrenched harmful cultural practices, beliefs, customs and values that create an environment that it is normal to abuse women and girls.
She sad the dialogue meeting was crucial because the stakeholders sought to address such structural and systemic causes of violence against women and girls as opposed to just looking at the symptoms.
Taking her turn, Minister of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare, Mary Navicha, acknowledged the violence women and girls still face and said she hopes that the action plan by the stakeholders will have new and innovative ways of dealing with such violence.
