HONIARA NOW HAS GENDER BASED VIOLENCE CLINIC

Honiara now has a Gender Based Violence Clinic and Referral Center to help victims of violence.

Speaking today at the launching of the “Seif Ples” Clinic, City Mayor Andrew Mua says the Clinic will also help prevent violence against women and children.

He says while there are reported cases of violence, there are also a lot of unreported cases of violence in the country.

“There have been unanimous cases of violence reported and not reported in the city of Honiara and also the country as a whole. This is a big problem that we faced for many years now and no civilized country should allow such consent or tolerate this kind of behaviour among our people. I know that there are many great initiatives undertaken, but we cannot rest until the whole society is secure, until no one should become a victim of this horrible practice and mis-behaviour.”

The Honiara Mayor also said the Honiara City Council welcomes the establishment of the Gender Base Violence Clinic with open arms.

“Honiara City Council welcomes the establishment of the GBV Clinic with open arms. I believe that we greatly need this clinic in order to strengthen our past and present initiative that our government or stakeholders and partners in development had put in place. It will assist the victim for its medical and psychological need to cope the impact or effect of the violence within Honiara and also Solomon Islands.”

The Gender Base Violence Clinic is supported by the British High Commission Office and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.

Meanwhile, the Acting Police Commissioner Juanita Matanga says the newly launched Gender Base Violence Clinic is important for the work of the police force.

Commissioner Matanga says clinic will help make their jobs easier, in terms of police investigations into domestic violence cases.

“We’ve seen this project as important for police because we would like to make it much more easier for our frontline policing officers when attending to domestic violence. Often when we seek for medical evidence we have to wait for months before getting them and there are times that it create hurdles for our investigators when prosecuting cases, and with this clinic it will enable our police officers to hopefully fasttrack this medical evidence so that we can prosecute the perpetrators who are creating more problems to our society.”