Existing measures to protect women and children against violence have proved inadequate, ineffective and, in some cases, biased against the victims. He was opening the Media Training Workshop on Violence Against Women in Maseru, the Basotho capital, on Monday. Information floating around makes sad reading. Throughout the SADC region, women's access to land, livestock, credit and other productive resources are limited.
Men still predominate at the top of the occupational hierarchy in all countries.
All but one country in the region have signed, ratified or acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. SADC governments are also all signatories to the region's own Gender and Development Declaration, which has an addendum on the Prevention and Eradication of Violence Against Women and Children. The rest have drafts which have remained just that for the past three years. The inter-governmental conference has been convened to review progress on what governments have done since they signed the addendum to the 1997 Declaration on Gender and Development by SADC heads of state or governments in 1998, one year after this event. In the declaration and the addendum, SADC heads of state committed themselves, and their respective countries, to take urgent measures to prevent and deal with the increasing levels of violence against women.