Botswana: The gender Affairs department under the Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture held a two days workshop of capacity building training on Gender development to sensitize Botswana Tribal Administration Services (BOTASA).
In his opening remarks, Dr Morenaogaufi Rankopo, the Vice chairperson at the National Gender Commission, highlighted that gender equality is important in every sphere of life. He noted that gender equality defines power relations privileges that we have and that gender is of paramount importance in social development.
Dr Rankopo said that gender affairs start from home, and therefore, we need to be mindful of how we teach our kids from a young age how to relate to the community. He mentioned that at the end of the training, we will be aware of how to facilitate gender affairs issues.
The objectives of the workshop were to ensure contact points are available for people to raise issues of gender experienced in the district.
To create awareness about gender Affairs, how they can accommodate others and differences. To ensure strategies are developed through the district to address identified issues.
From the Botswana Police, Assistant Superintendent Olga Chidambi talked about the efforts they have to help curb gender based violence crisis. She said that there is a high number of murders, rape, threat to kill, defilement, indecent assault and common nuisance.
Assistant Superintendent Chidambi stressed that children continue to be victims of GBV, and their intervention is that, in April 2021, they developed a gender and child branch and that they have eight children-friendly centres where they assist them.
Senior Gender Officer Lentswe Motsamai mentioned that the whole purpose of the training is to have gender sensitive ambassadors, mindset change, and be the defenders of human rights. He explained gender mainstreaming as balancing the needs of men and women to ensure that they have equal opportunities. He also encouraged the team to accept everyone as they are so that policies that are set can benefit both genders and cater for specific needs by applying a gender lens.