The establishment of a gender-based violence (GBV) and learner pregnancy (LP) regional office in Erongo will strengthen the provision of quality GBV and LP services to community members.
This was according to Regain Trust Project Manager, James Itana, in an interview with Nampa here on Wednesday.
“Namibia is one of the countries which experiences alarmingly high rates of GBV and LP and so due to the high statistics, we decided to meet the country’s efforts to achieve gender equality and minimise the number of GBV and LP cases,” Itana added.
Itana said the branch, which was launched recently in Walvis Bay by Regain Trust in partnership with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, will also respond to one of the many proposed strategies to be used by the two organisations for the implementation of a project titled “Survivors Speak Up!”
According to the GBV Protection Unit statistics of 2015 to 2017, about 195 cases of rape and 950 cases of domestic violence were recorded in the Erongo Region alone.
Meanwhile, Itana explained that in Erongo, 118 girls dropped out of school as a result of pregnancy in the same period.
“GBV and LP could be regarded as one of the key obstacles hampering the country’s progress to achieve gender equality in the country,” he said.
The project is expected to run for three years, between 2018 and 2021 and aims to complement existing efforts to address GBV/LP in the Khomas and Omusati as well.
The project is co-funded by the European Union.