Germany supports empowerment of women and girls in addressing SGBV in Sri Lanka

• Extends Rs. 4 m grant to Women In Need for its project, ‘Strengthening the Role of Women in Addressing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Sri Lanka’

In 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. This and other UN resolutions are promoting the respect of women’s rights in society and seek to increase their role in securing and maintaining peace in societies all over the world. 

An important part of this goal is to protect women against sexual violence. 

To commemorate this 20-year anniversary, and in an effort to promote human rights in general, the German Embassy provided a grant of nearly Rs. 4 million to the non-governmental organisation Women In Need (WIN) for their project, ‘Strengthening the Role of Women in Addressing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Sri Lanka’.

The primary goal of the project is to strengthen the mechanisms currently in place when dealing with victims of sexual and gender-based violence in order to increase gender sensitivity and responsiveness as well as to ensure the protection of women’s and girls’ rights. 

This will be achieved via several initiatives, like a training and empowerment program for women police officers, training programs for middle-level local government officials, and the strengthening of the already existing SGBV networks at the district or divisional level. 

The hope is that this will help create more effective and efficient remedial and preventive actions to address gender-based violence. Victims of SGBV will be offered psychological support and counselling during the duration of the project.

Around 1,500 women and children in areas of Batticaloa, Jaffna and Matara will be direct beneficiaries of this project, which includes 105 police women, 105 mid-level government officials, and many other participants of the awareness programs that will be conducted on this topic. Due to the lockdown measures imposed to contain COVID-19, domestic violence against women and children has been on the rise; therefore the embassy sees this as a timely initiative to swiftly address this crisis.  The agreement was signed recently between German Ambassador Joern Rohde and WIN Executive Director Savithri Wijesekara and Legal and Project Manager Mariam Wadood. Embassy Head of Culture Claudia Tietze was also present at the signing.