Africa-Press – Botswana. In an effort to combat gender-based violence (GBV) in the military, Botswana Defence Force (BDF) has established a Gender Affairs office.
BDF Commander Lt Gen. Placid Segokgo informed the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday that the office, housed under Human Resource Management (HR), aimed to address gender related issues and matters that could result from interactions of men and women.
He said in their endeavour to deal with GBV, the BDF had introduced chaplains and had employed industrial psychologists and social welfare officers to facilitate those who might have committed penal offences, resulting in them being overlooked.
Lt Gen. Segokgo said chaplains endeavoured to address people’s spiritual problems that could be the root cause of other challenges.
He said they employed social welfare officers who engaged from a non-spiritual standpoint, with the primary desire being to resolve threat to any individual’s life.
He said some of the problems were of some men failing to accept that they could have a spouse or partner who earned significantly more than they did, which created issues of inferiority and other issues. Gen. Segokgo noted an incident in which one officer killed two people after intimidating a junior officer to gain access to the armoury.
Since that incident, he said there was re-sensitization of personnel around armoury protocols.
He said from 2021 to 2025, they had recorded 86 incidents where BDF members had committed murder and suicide.
Lt Gen. Segokgo said since the beginning of the year, five members of the BDF had committed suicide.
He said 12 officers were accused of murder while there were 16 victims of those incidents.
He said 22 members had committed suicide in the four year period spanning 2021 to 2025.
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