Government and the law should protect women

One can understand the anger and frustration of the women victims of gender-based violence (GBV), who don’t believe the government’s effort to legislate against this societal scourge will come to anything.

As two of them tell us today, you can have as many well-intentioned laws as you like, unless the fundamental causes of GBV are addressed, nothing will change… and women – who are overwhelmingly the victims – and children will get assaulted, raped and murdered by men.

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Even using the acronym GBV somehow robs the actions of their vile nature – the brutalising of one human by another. By also including assaults on men by women – serious as they may be – the term can also deflect away from the war being waged on women and children.

The government can, and should, do much more – other than formulate laws – to ensure that women are treated with respect when trying to report their assaults to the criminal justice system.

Too many survivors of this violence feel they are violated a second time by cops especially, who don’t take their complaints seriously. There must be serious consequences for cops who act in this way.

Likewise, when cops take backhanders to let perpetrators get away with rape or assault, they must be locked up.

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Having a national sex offender register – accessible to law enforcement – is also long overdue. And let’s not worry about rights to privacy – once you attack someone like this, you forfeit those rights.

Then, according to activists working with GBV, the government must also work with them and NGOs helping abuse survivors should be properly funded. We agree.

This would be responsible use of taxpayer money. But the elephant in the room is still the attitude of men in our patriarchal, sexist society.

Unless that changes, women and children will be easy targets.