THE Special Parliamentary Committee on Gender Based Violence will conduct its first inquiry with the focus on the prosecution process as one of the priority task in ending Gender Based Violence in the country.
The committee raised this concern saying that with so many cases of Gender Based Violence (GBV) being perpetrated, there seem to be very few prosecutions taking place.
Speaking to the media yesterday, chairman of the Special Parliamentary Committee on GBV and Member for Alotau, Charles Abel has highlighted the key areas of importance the inquiry will be looking into. One of these important areas includes the prosecution of the perpetrators of GBV.
“The inquiry will look into the consequences affecting the prosecution process of GBV related crimes.
“We will look at specific issues along that prosecution chain whether its excess to getting a proper medical report, access to a magistrate , restraining orders and legislative twigs that need to be done so that we see more of the people that commit these crimes actually being held accountable,” Mr Abel said.
“We’ve got some very good background data and we want to bring some key people in front of us that we can draw up exactly to issues relating to prosecution.
“We are looking at having a dedicated prosecution team with people from various agencies to focus and be properly funded and peruse through these cases so that justice can be meted out,” Mr Able said.
He added that this is the first time in history there will be a Parliamentary Inquiry conducted by the GBV committee to investigate into the issues of what is gender based violence, what are the underlying causes and how they are going, as far as funding the policies, and what they can do about prosecution .
The chairman also highlighted there was a significant amount of funding that has already been appraised to the policy in 2018 and those funds don’t seem to have hit the grounds in a constructive way.
“We want to conduct some questions particular to the relevant senior people in Government for the commitment to funding the gender based violence policies that is already in existence and was approved by government.
“In particular the establishment of the interim secretariat and of course permanent secretariat and how that funding can effectively be allocated,” he said.
The inquiry will be conducted on the 24th and 25th of May, 2021.
The committee is inviting members of NGOs and government sectors to come and participate in the inquiry.