How sports can be used to fight gender based violence

The global fight against Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is going in the right direction. When the world unanimously accepts to honour 16 days to create awareness of violence against gender. Violence, as we know it, happens domestically in our communities, where boys and girls punch up at community water collection points.

It happens among men and women living in refugee camps. Also, at schools and work places. Violence is very much alive in a war zone, where the women and children are always the recipient of the harshest of mistreatment. But we can take this fight of GBV universally to the next level to make it a thing of the past. 

Recently, Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) joined this very solidarity to kick out GBV. According to FIFA, this is the time to become a part of the drive to eliminate this bad habit. 

Raise awareness about violence against the fairer gender and also of domestic violence. And make sure that the popular sports, football, is used to bring people together, rather than watch as these genders go at each other’s throat. We see how men beat up their wives. 

This is unfortunately recurrent in our part of the globe. Where our village police posts are at least 70  pe cent of the time trying to mediate in a domestic war between a husband and a wife. The family unit of the police have sad statistics on this domestic war. 

Usually, the female gender is the one that turns up at the police to record a case against their rampaging husbands. Contrastingly, husbands never go to the police station to report cases against their violent wives.

They suffer quietly and keep the shame to themselves. So, rather than watch this practice reach to fatal levels, we can unite families. Unite communities. We can even unite the world. And the tool that we can use to do it is through sports. 

To ensure visibility about GBV, sports will help promote the protection of the rights of the vulnerable gender. Image having a village family day out. Pick just one Saturday of the16 days available to eradicate GBV. 

Where families are encouraged to converge at the village sports ground to talk and associate with each other, and take part in sports. We have all these sports icons whom we can use to lead the way. Imagine Christiano Ronaldo participating in a community football gala, and using the occasion to directly address a group of youngsters about how to respect the vulnerable gender. 

Bring him to a community sports day, and let him participate as a referee. During such community days out, introduce the idea of respect for one another. Respect for gender. And enlighten the world that violence is never the answer to conflict. 

Otherwise, we would not witness the violence meted out to women and children in the war zones of South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen. 

This would cause an impact among especially the youth. It will get genders respecting themselves again. And men will respect their wives. Boys will respect their peer girls. Cases of women beating up their husbands will end easily. Since women are better listeners than their male counterparts. 

So, will more likely heed the call to be peace makers. Using sports to get the message across will amplify this message and go a long way in solving the GBV problem. It encourages the gender that feels superior to try to support the other community members. 

Sports can help community members review their own GBV safeguarding measures and improve their behavior towards one another. So, we have a big opportunity to transform our world by using sports to send the GBV awareness message to all the people of the world.

Simon J. Mone is a civil engineer, [email protected]