Spotlight Initiative Africa Regional Program: “CSOs Knowledge Sharing Forum” concluded with inspiring stories from civil society organizations

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The Central and Western Africa “Spotlight CSOs Knowledge Sharing Forum”, held from 9 to 10 August in Dakar, Senegal, brought together Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) through the Spotlight Initiative Africa Regional Program (SIARP)to share promising practices on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG), Harmful Practices (HR) and Promotion of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHRR). 

Five Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) were selected to showcase their promising practices from the 8 Spotlight initiative implementing countries Africa in their work on EVAWG ranging from prevention to responses including providing relief to survivors of gender-based violence, offering programmes that promote women's economic empowerment, women’s access to justice, financial literacy, temporary one stop centres, shelters, and legal support among others.

“UN Women recognizes the critical role that CSOs and women’s networks collectively play to advocate and work towards ending gender-based violence and harmful practices on the continent” declared Ms. Sunita Caminha, EVAW Policy Specialist in UN Women East and Southern Africa, in her opening remarks. The UN Women representative also highlighted the need to engage with regional processes and to leverage and communicate successes for enhanced visibility as well as strategize on how the learning spaces could be regularized and systematized to inform programming and intervention at grass root level as well as regional level advocacy work.

Ms. Victoria Maloka, Head of the Coordination and Outreach Division of Women, Gender, Development and Youth Directorate (WGYD) at AUC, emphasized the remarkable resilience of African women and the need for women to work together to raise their voices, to challenge, to innovate and to elevate interventions: “Let us use the opportunity created by the Spotlight Initiative to elevate our efforts to bring lasting change from community to continental level”, declared Ms. Victoria Maloka, in her opening remarks.

Stories of hope:

The CSO’s selected to present their programs under the Spotlight Initiative have taken a central stage in the two days Forum, presenting their promising practices and lessons learned in ending gender-based violence in their countries, under the Spotlight Initiative:

1. African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), in Nigeria, implemented the “Male Engagement Program”, with a strategic approach to working with men, traditional and religious leaders. The biggest success of the program was the abolishment of the “money-woman” tradition in Becheve, by the Council of Chiefs of the village. The abolition of this harmful practice reduced female children to objects for trade and pleasure.
2. Development Education Network-Liberia (DEN-L), in Liberia, supports the capacity of CSOs in advocacy and facilitates programmes that promote economic justice and gender equality. DEN-L trained more than 100 CSOs with skills in advocacy, SGBV, stakeholders’ engagement and resource mobilization to better address VAWG.
3. Girl Child Rights (GCR), in Mozambique, supports women and girls through service packages, start-up kits for self-employment, business mentoring and financial literacy. GCR supported 1,800 adolescents and young women with disabilities to manage 60 business groups led by women and provided 24 business licenses to women led companies.
4. Justice Centres (JCU), in Uganda, implemented the program "Enhancing Access to Quality Essential Legal Aid and Referral Services by Women and Girls who Experience Violence", offering a broad range of legal services. JCU supported 231 women to be released from prison and sensitized 23,000 women on GBV.
5. Musasa, in Zimbabwe, launched the mobile 'One Stop Centre (OSC)' to provide medical treatment, legal advice and therapy to survivors with access to counsellors, lawyers and ministries representatives. Musasa reach 1,674 survivors through the mobile 'One Stop Centre' and increased the report and protection of survivors of child marriages in remote areas.

The Forum came to an end with the closing remarks of Ms. Oulimata Sarr, UN Women Regional Director of the Regional Office for West & Central Africa: “The power of storytelling and comprehensive approaches has come out strongly. In telling our stories we make the survivors visible to duty bearers and stakeholders who design the right interventions. There is also power in designing survivor justice mechanisms, which was displayed in the stories of two CSOs who provide mobile legal aid services to women. By equipping the survivors of violence to tell their stories, we empower them to transform their realities”, stated the UN Women Regional Director. The Central and Western Africa forum was a continuation of the East and Southern Africa CSOs forum which took place from 6-7 July in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of UN Women - Africa.