Programme director
Ladies and gentlemen
This occasion gives us an opportunity to explore ideas of tackling a recurring challenge of our times, which spans all geographic borders across the globe.
This challenge is rather sparked by the dehumanising behaviour of some in our societies, whose acts of violence against women and children continue to be a source of pain in the lives of countless women and children.
The socio-economic status of women and children, mostly characterised by income poverty, has in many instances left them vulnerable to various forms of abuse.
In addition, it has also led to the resounding silence that is killing the inherent resilience of women to act against any form of injustice as witnessed in many revolutions, including our own fight against apartheid in South Africa.
Accordingly, the theme of my address compels me to mention upfront that South Africa remains committed in the global fight against this scourge. This commitment is inspired by the culture of human rights that has become the mainstay of our democracy since 1994. In this regard, this has found expression in our Constitution, but also in line with our resolve to advance the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including the MDG3 of Strengthening Women’s Strategic Use of information and communication technology (ICTs) to Combat Violence Against Women and Girls.
In our view, it is important to move from a premise that rightfully acknowledges that women and children’s rights are human rights. All our efforts towards sustainable development, while largely concentrated in fighting poverty and creating jobs, must also take into account the participation of women in development, including through the use of information and communication technology.
While it is critically important to ensure that women and girl children have access to ICT facilities, this should also be broadened to include their participation in policy processes regulating the use of such facilities. This should be aimed at building the capacity of women activists, abused women and girl children as well as survivors of gender-based violence to ensure that ICT policies and facilities have a positive impact in women’s rights. In particular, it is important to use technology for awareness and educational campaigns that spread the message against violence on women and children.
Women must have a clear understanding of the role that technology can play in their own development from uplifting themselves out of poverty to exposing and reporting incidents of gender-based violence.
In this regard, we are aware of the enormous work done by non-governmental organisations such as the Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Programme towards achieving the MDG3 by:
- Mobilising key stakeholders to stop violence against women and girls by building feminist analysis into global, regional and national ICT policy.
- Building and strengthening the capacity of women and adolescent girls and women’s rights organisations to use, reclaim and shape ICT to stop violence against and girls.
- Creating platforms and opportunities for women and adolescent girls to critically engage with ICTs to combat violence, and as survivors of violence to contribute towards self and collective healing.
Through this programme, they have been able to reach out to survivors of domestic and sexual violence, including rural and migrant women, in partnership with various women’s rights organisations.
Programme director,
For us to make the desired impact, we need to explore various forms of technological platforms. The huge growth in the use of cellphones provides a potential avenue for combating this violence.
Cellphones offer excellent ways of:
- receiving information on what to do after an incident
- notifying others of distress through ‘panic button’ services for immediate response
- providing ongoing support to survivors of abuse and rape
- advocacy messaging
- providing counseling and group self-help services
- mobilising responses
One of the key reasons that often see women subjected to violence is isolation. We believe that when women are in contact with supportive networks of friends, family or neighbours they are much less likely to be attacked.
In this regard, cellphones are a tool that many women have access to that can reduce isolation, linking them to support networks and anti-gender violence services. These supportive networks can help overcome the power imbalances that often are the cause of violence against women. In South Africa, there are around 39 million active cellphone users. Around 80% of all youth and adults have a cellphone.
Research indicates that the imbalance in cellphone usage between men and women is not as great as with most other resources. It is estimated that about 45% of cellphone users are women. Therefore a reasonable estimate would be that over two-thirds of all women have a cellphone. While this is certainly biased towards urban women, it is true that a significant number of women in townships, informal settlements and rural areas have cellphones. We can then say that for women in rural areas and informal settlements, their cellphones are the only communication device at home, a place where violence often take place.
Ladies and gentlemen,
At the same time, it is also important to put in place stringent and enforceable measures that seek to ensure that technology is not used to perpetuate the very abuse we are fighting against.
This includes through unscrupulous attempts and advances that seek to lead girl children astray in technological social networks and other sites by exposing them to pornography, among others. We must ensure that there are policies in place to protect girl children against paedophiles who prey on young girls through technology.
We know that the media environment also poses certain challenges relating to the exposure of children to undesirable programmes and content. In South Africa, we have the Films and Publication Board, whose mission includes regulating the media environment through the classification of content by:
- Balancing the right to freedom of expression with an obligation to protect children from exposure to potentially disturbing, harmful and inappropriate materials.
- Protect children from sexual exploitation in media content, in order to educate the broader South African society to make informed decisions.
As a result, the law that governs this Board, the Films and Publications Act “regulates the creation, production, possession and distribution of certain publications and films by means of classification, the imposition of age restrictions.”
In addition, it also “makes exploitative use of children in pornographic publications, films or on the internet punishable”.
In conclusion, I hope this platform will give us time and space to think deeply about various avenues of fighting the scourge of against women and children. This is what we must do to root out fear, helplessness, vulnerability and low self-esteem in the hearts and minds of the many affected women and girl children.
I thank you.
