The Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) Deputy Vice Chancellor Agnes Mwangwela has explained the importance of walking away from gender based violence to ensure that everyone enjoys the right to liberty and education at the campus.
Mwangwela was speaking during commemoration of the 16-days of activism against gender based violence under the theme “Unite: Invest to prevent violence against women and girls” at Bunda main campus on Friday in Lilongwe.
She explained that they began with a big walk to raise awareness to all people including all those outside the campus since there has been evidence of gender based violence spill-over.
LUANAR Deputy Vice Chancellor Mwangwela: We receive about 10 cases of GBV per year and need to deal with it
“From next week, we have organised a gender based violence information desk which will provide and disseminate important messages to both staff and students in order to tackle it and have a GBV free campus,” said Mwangwela.
LUANAR Deputy Vice Chancellor elaborated that the campus receives about 10 gender based violence cases yearly from a group of students who might experience it through fellow student boyfriends after being drunk or disjointed relationships.
She added, “Sometimes we also do receive cases from women members of Staff and vice versa which we want to eradicate.”
Therefore, Mangwela said LUANAR has a gender policy that encourages both students and staff to report cases whenever they experience it.
A group of LUANAR students taking part in a big walk
And a fourth-year student in Gender and Development Studies, Kuunika Kamende admitted about some gender based violence, which occurs at the campus and she expects that awareness campaigns will curb or reduce the cases.
She added that GBV has affected everyone at LUANAR where so many things happen both knowingly or unknowingly, hence the need for collaborated efforts to deal with the vice.
