To intensify cooperation with South Africa on interpersonal violence, Canada high commissioner Chris Cooter, Germany deputy ambassador Dr Rüdiger Lotz and South Africa Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs director-general Avril Williamson participated in the launch of a new partnership, the Inclusive Violence and Crime Prevention (VCP) programme, on March 3, at the Pretoria National Botanical Gardens.

The high prevalence of interpersonal violence in South Africa, including gender-based violence (GBV), is not only a major barrier to human rights and gender equality, but also poses a threat to stability and social cohesion, and limits South Africa’s progress in overcoming poverty, unemployment and inequality.

The partnership aims to address the underlying causes of interpersonal violence, in particular the “second pandemic” and one of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s national priorities, GBV and femicide, through the VCP programme.

Global Affairs Canada recently signed a co-financing agreement with German development cooperation GIZ, which works on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, to support the continued work of the VCP programme.

The new partnership will enhance cooperation on the three countries’ shared priority of empowering women and girls and promoting peace and justice, which are foundational for a strong, just and prosperous society.

The VCP programme provides technical assistance to enable closer collaboration between government departments, municipalities, nongovernmental organisations, faith leaders, schools and researchers to address the causes of interpersonal violence and realise the goals of the National Strategic Plan on GBV and Femicide, as well as the White Paper on Safety and Security.

In addition, this year marks the tenth anniversary of the German-South African VCP programme, with the March 3 event also having served as a celebration of the many contributions and achievements of the programme and its partners over the past decade.

These include helping to establish a comprehensive national violence prevention policy framework, and developing evidence-informed implementation strategies.

Over the years, the programme also served to enhance the capacities of cities and municipalities for building safer communities, through providing training, addressing system-level requirements, generating data to guide evidence-informed plans and demonstration projects.

Further, the programme also empowered young people to become changemakers for safety in their schools and wider communities, and created various knowledge generation and exchange platforms, which have helped sustain and build the momentum behind a whole-of-society approach to violence prevention amongst a growing alliance of government and civil society partners.