Unintended complicities: preventing violence against women in South Africa

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Abstract:

This article considers how the prevention of violence against women and girls (VAWG) is inadvertently being caught up in broader economic policies aimed at the cut-back of services, with the basis for this argument provided by a detailed case study of funding to organisations providing post-rape care services in South Africa. To contextualise current circumstances, this analysis is introduced with a brief history of funding to social care services. Decisions made at the global level are then highlighted in order to explore their impact at the local level. Given these effects, it is crucial that conversations be opened around how democratic practice and process can be better observed in the translation from the global to the local – especially in relation to preserving the complementarity of prevention to services.