Africa-Press – Botswana. Botswana continues to develop and implement strategies towards gender equality and equity through the removal of potential obstacles likely to limit the equal involvement and participation of either genders.
This was said by the acting permanent secretary for justice, Mr Moffart Lubinda at a workshop to validate draft guidelines on gender mainstreaming within the criminal justice system by the European Union (EU)-Botswana dialogue on Wednesday
Mr Lubinda, who is also the project lead, indicated that with the influence of global events and conferences focusing on addressing women’s exclusion from mainstream development, Botswana established a Women’s Affairs Unit in 1981 mandated to promote policies and programmes that would make women and their contribution to national development visible.
“Currently, Botswana has a fully operational gender affairs department in the Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sports, Arts and Culture, and its mandate has evolved over time to include influence on gender responsive law reform, policy development and advice as well as monitoring and evaluation,” he said.
Mr Lubinda said government had prioritised reforming the justice system to ensure access to justice by all.
He however, admitted that there were no guidelines governing gender mainstreaming in the criminal justice sector, which he said compromised the quality of service to victims, witnesses and perpetrators.
He said the absence of such therefore raised the need to capacitate professionals on laws on gender responsiveness to enable them to adequately intervene as expected.
Mr Lubinda said that this was the reason for striking an agreement to implement a policy dialogue facility programme with the EU.
“This project was designed to create a system that recognises and enforces human rights across gender considerations with a deliberate bias towards uplifting the vulnerable members of the society. It was also to standardise gender mainstreaming guidelines within the justice system,” he said.
Mr Lubinda also said the project aimed to transfer gender mainstreaming knowledge from the justice system to the community among others.
He said they expected the guidelines to help the criminal justice ensure standardised decisions and capacitated justice actors as well as empower civil society organisations among other outcomes. He said there was a need to validate the draft guidelines to ensure that they met the intended purpose.
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