Dialogue Between Co-leaders of the Action Coalition on GBV

On the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women held on Wednesday 25th, the Cabinet Secretary, Prof. Margaret Kobia participated in a dialogue between co-leaders of the Action Coalition on GBV and girl-led and women’s rights organisations on the frontline of tackling GBV.

Within the #GenerationEquality Action Coalition on Gender Based Violence that Kenya is co-leading with United Kingdom, Uruguay, Iceland together with UN Women and other partners, recognizes the critical role and contribution of Women Rights Organization’s and Girl led organizations in attaining our goal for gender equality.

The Government of Kenya commits to the following:

i. Ensuring that women rights and girl-led organizations participate and contribute meaningfully in the Action Coalition initiatives, even as the blueprint for the Coalition is being developed. More importantly by ensuring their voices are heard when coming up with the policy priorities commitments for the Generation Equality Forum in June 2021;

ii. Ensuring that they are part of the Kenya’s leadership structure of the Action Coalition on Gender Based Violence as the country support mechanism to be launched soon at the National level;

iii. Working in partnership in our advocacy work so as to strengthen and to sustain efforts to prevent violence by addressing social norms for promoting gender equality for a transformative world;

iv. Support their efforts for resource mobilization in order to effectively complement the Governments initiatives on ending Gender Based Violence; and

v. Strengthen our linkages with other arms of Government and stakeholders to ensure that adolescent girls and young women are not exploited, are protected from harmful practices such as FGM and Child marriage and safely return and stay in school for the realization of their full potential in life.

Prof. Kobia reiterated the Action Coalition Joint Leadership Statement of 29th September 2020 on the commitment to work together to stop any reversal of hard-won progress on advancing gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment due to COVID -19 pandemic.

She noted that efforts to rebuild after the COVID-19 pandemic must have women and girl’s agency at their heart and tackle the longer- term strategy and root causes of GBV.

#16Days#OrangeTheWorld