12 Dec 2022

Botswana and the European Union (EU) have concluded an agreement to implement a policy dialogue facility programme.

 This was revealed Friday  by Ministry of Justice acting permanent secretary, Mr Moffat Lubinda at a dialogue forum held in Gaborone.

   Mr Lubinda said the programme had generated a project on gender mainstreaming within the justice system.

  The objective was to recognise and enforce human rights across gender considerations with a deliberate bias towards uplifting vulnerable members of society, he explained.

Mr Lubinda said government had prioritised reforming the justice system to ensure access by all.

However, he said lack of guidelines governing gender mainstreaming in the criminal justice sector hindered provision of quality service to victims, witnesses and perpetrators.

“This implies that there are no written guidelines on gender mainstreaming for investigators, prosecutors, social workers and other law enforcement officers dealing with GBV cases,” he said.

Mr Lubinda said there was therefore need to capacitate professionals on laws, from a perspective of gender responsiveness, so as to enable them to adequately intervene.

Mr Lubinda said the project’s objectives included developing standardised gender mainstreaming guidelines; transferring knowledge from justice system professionals to communities and peer to peer exchanges with EU on gender mainstreaming issues.

The expected outcome was standardised decisions by justice sector actors, capacitated justice actors as well as empowered communities and civil societies.

The acting permanent secretary said the project was partly funded by the European Union Development Fund in partnership with government. ends