GBV IS NO LONGER MERELY A GLOBAL EPIDEMIC

UNBRIDLED, pigeons made love on window sills indifferent to the appearance of the human audience,

Sapping nectar of love through its beak, the male proffered assurances of dignity,

Moment redundant; female heaped its shattered honour onto mauled feathers,

Noises permeated into the hearth; nature echoed her profanity across the blue sky;

Drama ensued, masculinity converted to theatricals hopped over to new women,

Hence feminism overshadowed by innate existence remained serene.

-Molly Kumar ( from the book - Life’s Cares)

IKE many other women, Naomi’s story began as a fairy tale. She was swept off her feet by Gift Banda, her perfect and long-awaited Prince Charming.

She thought her happily ever after had arrived. Little did she know that her happiness was short-lived. When the mine she worked for closed, she believed her husband would take care.

With a hefty severance package, she and her husband continued living a lavish lifestyle until the money ran out. Their first big fight left her with a visible scar across her lips. And then, the fights never stopped. Naomi knew she ought to fight back to prevail.

She got a restraining order and carried her battle in a court of law. Her husband finally divorced her. Recalling her ordeal, Naomi felt she escaped right on time otherwise her life would have ended.

Her mantra for life - “Women must choose to live with dignity” offers hope and encourages other victims to combat gender-based violence with courage.

The greatest challenge in society is the prevalence of pessimistic perspectives among people toward gender-based violence. People pretend to either negate or overlook violence in their neighbourhoods.

Their viewpoints have more to do with getting

Lunnecessarily entangled with authorities handling gender-based violence. People rarely band together to rescue victims of violence or to protect them and offer shelter.

This disharmony in the community and absence of trust toward authorities leads to an expansive number of unreported incidents of gender-based violence.

Danso was nine years old when his mother brought home a man and ordered Danso to address him as “Father.”

Danso until then had no father figure to look up to in his life. He enthusiastically accepted this man as his father. He was extremely affectionate toward Danso.

One Sunday when his mother left to go to church alone, Danso was raped by his loving father. Danso suffered this man’s brutality right till the age of 17. By then almost everyone within his extended family and neighbours knew what was happening to him. His cries often reverberated through the tight lanes of the hood.

But no one dared to rescue this poor boy. Danso’s stepfather was a local politician who wielded great powers. The story ended with Danso killing his loving father in front of the roadside grocery shack.

The whole neighbourhood kept quiet. Their shocked murmurs could not overshadow the heart-wrenching shrieks of the poor abused Danso.

The victims of gender-based violence are innumerable across the world. Some of their stories are horrible, to say the least. However, some of these victims have monumental courage to own their lives and fight back. Not all emerge victorious. Some lose the battle while others lose the will to live. To sum up the conversation, many undertakings to counter this social ill known as Gender-based violence exist in almost every part of the world.

Nevertheless, these projects have only succeeded in generating dialogue. Women, men, and children continue to be subjected to gender-based violence, ceaselessly.

In many situations, victims are even unaware of the abuse happening to them. The patterns of abuse are simply embedded in their social and cultural structures. Hence, the abuse is accepted as just a way of life to be endured.

Thereupon, gender-based violence must be extensively defined and ought to be inclusive. It must be overhauled to bring the ever-evolving dynamics of relationships into consideration.

It is no longer merely a global epidemic - due to changing world politics and economies, the problem of violence is fast spreading with no sustainable solution in sight.