Page 41 - SCAT GBV Report - Addressing Gender-Based Violence - 2021

• Roles, obligations and due diligence standards for service providers, including relevant services charters27 and standard operating procedures.
• Technical skills, based on identified needs such as strategic planning, financial planning, governance, communications and fundraising.
• Experientially-based learning interventions on, amongst others, the multiple drivers and forms of GBV, LGBTIQ issues, children’s rights and abuse, etc.
• Support LDAs to systematise and streamline their referral networks for GBV survivors in their justice-seeking journeys.
• Facilitate peer mentorship programmes with veteran and emerging leaders in the sector, in particular women and LGBTIQ people.
• Assist to develop locally-appropriate standards of practice that guide LDA processes and interactions, enhance client accountability, and rationalise approaches.
• Support the strengthening of case management systems as an evidence-based tool for LDA services and advocacy, and identify gaps and challenges in system responses.
• Facilitate peer learning on the role of traditional leadership and customary law in tackling gender discrimination, including gender-based violence.
• Facilitate the sharing of best practice for the promotion of sexual and gender rights in this arena.
5.4 Connecting and collectivity
Together with other urban-based NGOs and intermediaries, SCAT has a role to play in facilitating linkages and enhancing networking and collaboration towards collective action across rural-urban and local-district-national divides. As stated in the SCAT/ CLS report, this facilitating role ‘not only mitigates the feeling that the LDAs operate in virtual isolation, but also provides possibilities for sharing resources, capacities and materials across the network’ (Karimakwenda et al, 2020:51).
The increased connectivity of LDAs to new and existing spaces on the thematic area of GBV and women’s leadership will also enhance collective strategising across the sector. Relevant existing structures in this regard include, amongst others: provincial networks on violence against women; the Shukumisa Campaign; the Women’s Ikwelo Network; structures related to the implementation of the NSP-GBVF; Victim Empowerment Forums; the Rural Women’s Movement; the Alliance for Rural Democracy; and the National Shelter Movement. Connections that need to be built and sustained are those with gender-focused NGOs and law firms – as an access to justice strategy.28
The Dullah Omar Summer School for paralegals is a key location for collective thinking and action across the CAO sector, and a recognised space for ‘taking up campaigns that help the advice office sector and the LDAs to take up issues nationally, because often a local advice office might see a phenomena and only be seeing one of the pieces, and they need advocacy to take the issues up to another level’.29 Strengthened connections can also enhance LDAs’ relationships with key provincial actors working on GBV; facilitate rural women’s participation in decision-making forums at district, provincial, national and international levels; increase rural participation in wider GBV campaigns for access to justice and to tackle state inefficiencies; and amplify rural realities in the national discourse on GBV.
27. For example, the Service Delivery Charter for courts (DOJ, n.d.).
28. One such strategy is ‘low bono’, which aims to increase access to law-related services for people who do not qualify
for pro bono assistance, but who cannot afford private attorney fees.
29. The school engages in both ‘vertical and horizontal learning’, which includes peer learning and network building,
together with accrediated paralegal training (Lynette Maart, key informant).
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