Voice and Choice summits kick start in Southern Africa

Johannesburg, 4 June: Gender Links (GL) and the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance will host the #VoiceandChoice summits in Angola; Botswana; DRC; eSwatini; Lesotho; Madagascar; Malawi; Mozambique  Namibia; Seychelles; South Africa; Tanzania; Zambia and  Zimbabwe  from June to September 2019. Mauritius has already convened its national summit and announced its 14 winners .These country level summits will culminate in a regional summit to be held in November 2019 at the commencement of the 16 Days of Activism.

Entries are now open and GL is calling for submissions in the following categories Action, Youth, Media, Drivers of ChangeEntrepreneurship current,Entrepreneurship previous as well as Centres of Excellence Institutional.

Running under the banner Local Action for a strong 2030 A-gender in Southern Africa the summits serve as a springboard to call governments to account for gender equality commitments made in the SADC Gender Protocol and the Sustainable Development Goals. The summits will pave way for the localisation of the recently adopted SRHR strategy.

The main purpose of the #VoiceandChoice Summit is to allow participants to learn and share best practices from various sectors across the countries including Government departments, Non-Governmental organisation (NGOs), Community Based Organisations (CBOs), Faith Based Organisations (FBOs), Local Government councils as well as the media.

The summit will also include plenaries on #VoiceandChoice and fifty –fifty campaigns in light of the national elections taking place across the region.

From 2018 GL and the Alliance have run the #VoiceandChoice campaign focusing on the importance of enabling women, to have voice, choice and control over their own Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). Since then GL and the Alliance have developed 37 national SRHR and 103 local SRHR campaigns putting emphasis on particularly maternal health , menstrual health,  Comprehensive Sexual Education and teenage pregnancies, Safe Abortion, HIV and AIDS , Child marriages as well as sexual diversity. In addition, GL worked with 95 councils across ten countries to update their SRHR plans. The summits also provide an important checkpoint to evaluate the implementation of the campaigns and action plans at national and local level.

The Voice and choice campaign connects the dots from global to regional to local level in the implementation of the gender equality frameworks. Under the #VoiceandChoice campaign GL also conducted a mapping of SRHR policies and laws in SADC to gauge whether countries have put in place SRHR laws and policies and whether these are adequate in the promotion and protection of SRHR especially for youth and adolescents. This mapping gives firm grounding for advocacy purposes to hold governments accountable. 

Entries to participate in the summit are now open and will close on carried dates across the different countries as follows: