Portfolio committee on women and children wants accountability for GBV perpetrators

Parliament’s portfolio committee on women, youth and people with disabilities has condemned the impregnation of young girls and teenagers and wants the perpetrators to face the full might of the law. 

Committee chairperson  Nonhlanhla Ncube-Ndaba said i the impregnation of young girls was another form of gender-based violence (GBV) that requires urgent government attention.  

Ncube-Ndaba was reacting to statistics from the health department which revealed at least 23,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 19 fell pregnant between April 2020 and March 2021.

The health department said of the reported pregnancies, around 3,000 girls opted to terminate their pregnancies.

Ncube-Ndaba said the committee recently received reports from the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) detailing the results of the implementation of its programmes focused on GBV and femicide (GBVF).

She said the commission visited 50 police stations and Thuthuzela centres to monitor their capacity to deal with cases of GBVF but found, among other things, that cases were delayed and some police stations faced a shortage of rape kits.

“These are gruesome acts of GBV and the perpetrators must be held to account,” said Ncube-Ndaba.