The SundayMag team would like to wish you all a Gender-based Violence (GBV) free festive season. In fact we would like to wish you a festive season and a new year free of any form of violence. Our hearts go out to the women and children in all those homes where GBV has been or is experienced.

According to the World Health Organisation, Gender-based violence, or violence against women (VAW), is a major public health and human rights problem throughout the world.

VAW has profound implications for health but is often ignored. WHO’s World Report on Violence and Health notes that "one of the most common forms of VAW is that performed by a husband or male partner.”

This type of violence is frequently invisible since it happens behind closed doors. Moreover, legal systems and cultural norms often do not treat it as a crime, but rather as a "private” family matter or a normal part of life.

What happens behind closed doors might be invisible to those outside. However, if those who suffer it are assured that their cries will be heard and action taken, they will expose those that practice it, and hopefully GBV will cease to exist in our society.

No family can claim to enjoy the festive season when it has traces of GBV and other sorts of violence in it.

In fact, the festive season might be the most dreaded since the perpetrators are likely to get more violent under the influence of alcohol or the feeling of inadequacy to provide for their families.

Let all communities, local defence units, police, be on the look out for everyone so that this can surely be the festive season it should be. Let the peace go on all the way to the coming year and beyond. 

Editor