Amnesty South Africa (Twitter)
Amnesty International has launched a campaign that seeks to hold government accountable for the promises it made in dealing with the scourge of Gender-Based Violence.
The #InterruptBrokenPromises campaign seeks to end the cycle of broken promises.
Amnesty's South Africa spokesperson, Genevieve Quintal, says President Ramaphosa had announced a number of initiatives to help fight gender-based violence and femicide.
However, she says to date, very few of these have been implemented, despite Gender-Based Violence and Femicide remaining high in the country.
Meanwhile, Quintal says the campaign has several key demands.
These include the immediate establishment of the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, including the development of a costed and funded operational plan.
She said the DNA backlog of 58 000 cases must be cleared by the end of September, as publicly committed to by Minister for Police Bheki Cele on the 24th of March.
In 2020/21 there were 155,062 crimes committed against women and 2,655 women were murdered. The total number of women murdered is equivalent to one woman being murdered every three hours. This is almost five times the global average.
Between October and December 2021, the SAPS received a total of 14,188 cases of sexual offences, of which 11,315 were cases of rape and 2,069 were cases of sexual assault.
Amnesty International said President Ramaphosa signed three anti-GBV bills into legislation recently, but despite progressive legislation addressing GBV in South Africa, there are systemic failures in the implementation of policies and legislation.
"Merely amending legislation without ensuring its implementation is not enough," they added.
