A cross-section of government ministries met yesterday for the second sitting of the Technical Inter-Ministerial Committee on Gender-Based Violence (IMC-GBV), pushing forward a broader campaign to confront GBV head-on.
Committee Chairperson and Minister of Youth and Gender Affairs, Hon. Lesego Chombo, didn’t mince words: gender issues had long been treated as the Gender Department’s job alone, with other stakeholders sitting on the sidelines. That gap is what drove her Ministry to ask Cabinet to elevate the Committee into an executive body.
Cabinet approved the request in July, and the Terms of Reference followed soon after. Chombo traced the Committee’s roots to last year’s first meeting, which brought her Ministry together with the Office of the State President and the Ministries of Finance, Local Government and Traditional Affairs, Child Welfare and Basic Education, Higher Education, Justice and Correctional Services, and Health.
Each tackles GBV through its own mandate. That spread isn’t incidental. It’s the backbone of a coordinated response instead of a siloed one. An action plan tabled last year has since won Cabinet’s backing, along with a directive to cost it properly, since most ministries currently have no dedicated funding for GBV work. Follow-through is where the real test lies, Chombo said: turning commitments into action.
As policy holder, MYGA has drafted a GBV Bill to close key legal gaps. She pushed for it to go public soon so government can meet its obligations and strengthen protection for citizens. MYGA is also revisiting the National Policy on Gender and Development to make it speak more directly to both women’s and men’s needs.
Chombo called this a chance to reinvigorate programming for men, including reviving the Men Sector, which moved under MYGA but never fully got off the ground. On the economic front, she pointed to women’s entrepreneurship support: ten percent of the alcohol levy now funds empowerment initiatives, and NDP 12 includes market centres built for women traders.
Chombo pushed back on framing men only as perpetrators in GBV discourse. Their mental health and struggles deserve space in the conversation too. On the National Strategy Towards Ending GBV, she described MYGA’s role as coordinator, not sole executor: guiding stakeholders on what to do and how, backed by technical support.
Ministers will also get trained on how their mandates connect to the gender agenda. Chombo called this essential. Ministers shape policy in their own portfolios, and they need to see clearly how that work drives gender equality and cuts GBV.