On 6-7 November, 2023 Pathfinders, in partnership with ACCORD, the Government of South Africa and with the support of the Government of Switzerland, hosted the third meeting of the Halving Global Violence Task Force.
The meeting was attended by the South African Minister for Social Development, Honourable Minister Lindiwe Zulu; the Deputy Director of the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation, H.E Ambassador Dominik Stillhart; the African Union High Representative to the Silencing the Guns Initiative, H.E Dr. Mohamed Chambas; the Minister for People with Disabilities and Other Vulnerable People for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Honourable Minister Irene Esambo Diata; the Director of New York University’s Centre on International Co-operation, Ms Sarah Cliff; and ACCORD’s Founder and Executive Director, Dr Vasu Gounden (who serves as a Member of the Task Force). The meeting was also attended by representatives from the Thami Nkadimeng Group, the South African Medical Research Council, the University of Konstanz, the Institute for Economics and Peace, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Violence Against Children, the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and Statistics South Africa, among others.
The meeting discussed the findings of the national-level studies on the cost of violence in South Africa, Switzerland and Costa Rica and how the task force can leverage the findings of the reports to create political will towards programmes and initiatives that will reduce interpersonal violence. In addition, the meeting discussed people-centred justice and how it can be used as a tool to cut global violence in half, exploring the linkages between inequality, polarising narratives and violence, and how best to address these linkages and the 2024 plans for the Task Force.
The meeting also included a session on exploring the linkages between inequality, polarising narratives and violence, which was a roundtable discussion that included inputs from; Minister Zulu; Mr Peter Fiegel, the Executive Director of the Federal Anti-Racism Strategy at Canadian Heritage; Ms Alissa Wahid, the National Director of the Gusdurian Network; Mr Dean Peacock, the Director for Countering Militarised Masculinities at Mobilising Men for Feminist Peace; Mr Jordan Street, Senior Policy and Advocacy Lead at Saferworld US; Ms Rachel Locke, Director of the Violence, Inequality and Power Lab at Joan B. Kroc School of Peace and Studies and; Ms Jane Barlow, the Director of Programmes at the Global Centre for Pluralism.
The third meeting of the Halving Global Violence Task Force came at a pivotal moment in the efforts to halve global violence. The country reports further enabled Pathfinders to build a business case for violence prevention, as the reports assessed the costs of interpersonal violence, and evaluated the existing interventions.
