08 Mar 2020

 It is important to focus attention on areas requiring further action on gender equality while celebrating social, political and economic achievements of women, Serowe-based senior gender officer, Ms Peloyame Tladi, has said.

Ms Tladi said Botswana’s constitution guaranteed equality before the law and prohibited discrimination based on gender, adding that Women’s Day provided an opportunity to highlight both achievements and challenges faced by women and girls.

Ms Tladi was a guest speaker at a recent Women’s Day commemoration, which was organised by female police officers and police clusters in Serowe.

She said the commemoration provided an opportunity to galvanise support to end gender based violence and enable stakeholders to introspect as well as intensify advocacy on women empowerment.

Ms Tladi said some of the challenges facing women threatened to reverse human development gains made since independence.

‘’It is an opportune time to sensitise the public about human rights challenges faced by women and girls in Botswana’’, she said.  

Ms Tladi said advocacy for women’s equality had made positive gains but the world was still unequal. She said in Botswana women still experienced violence, saying they were raped, murdered, assaulted and defiled.    

She said Botswana was making progress to domestic instruments, and since 1995 the law concerning gender equality was amended to make it gender sensitive.

Ms Tladi said in 2016, government launched its transformative blueprint, Vision 2036;, a framework for achieving prosperity for all.

She said, through the transformative blueprint, the country was set to achieve great strides in human development including gender equality.

Ms Tladi  stated that 2020 was a historic year for women rights because it marked the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for action.“Women and girls continue to face multiple challenges such as poverty, burden of HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancies, harmful traditional practices, effects of patriarchy, poor representation of women in leadership positions especially in the sphere of politics and many other intractable challenges’’, she said.

For his part, Serowe station commander, Superintendent Poloko Oteng, said they were concerned about violence to women,  adding that there was an alarming rate of rape, murder, assault, treat to kill and defilement cases in Serowe and surrounding villages.  ENDS