New scorecard warns South Africa's GBVF Council needs more teeth to deliver on national promises

South Africa took a historic step in 2024 when it passed the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Act, creating, for the first time, a permanent statutory home for coordinating the country's response to gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF). But a new scorecard released by Sonke Gender Justice, with support from UN Women South Africa and the Embassy of Ireland, warns that the Act, while a critical foundation, is not yet fit for purpose.

The Scorecard on the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Act of 2024 was deliberated upon at a dialogue in Johannesburg on 22 April 2026, bringing together civil society, government representatives, survivors, academics and development partners. It assesses the Act against eight dimensions, including legal authority, governance, funding, representation and data systems and finds that most fall short of "adequate," with three rated outright inadequate: coordination and accountability, inclusivity and representation, and survivor-centred obligations.

A foundation, not yet a fortress

The scorecard is clear that the Act's greatest achievement is simply existing: it moves South Africa's GBVF coordination out of ad hoc, interim arrangements and into permanent law, establishing a Board, Chief Executive Officer and Secretariat, and anchoring the Council within public finance accountability systems. But the analysis found that from a practical standpoint, the Act stops short of mandating binding duties that compel national, provincial, and local government to align their plans and budgets with the National Strategic Plan on GBVF (NSP), as well as ensuring that accountability is upheld.

Bafana Khumalo, Sonke Gender Justice's Co-Executive Director, situated the scorecard within years of civil society advocacy that led to the NSP itself. He recalled how organisations lobbied the Government and Treasury for a coherent national plan, eventually persuading the State to fund it, using money already allocated to departments but left unspent. "It is not enough to simply say we are shocked every time another woman or a child is killed; we need and still need a clear, coherent programme that binds all stakeholders together in an effort to transform women's lives," said Khumalo. He welcomed the involvement of the private sector through the GBVF Fund but cautioned against the government treating this as a substitute for its own responsibility. "This is not the correct picture. This is a national challenge, and the Government should be leading, with the private sector coming to the party, not the other way around."

Turning to the scorecard's findings, Khumalo was candid about what they reveal. "The indicators are troubling. They point to a lack of coherence, a lack of collective response, in living up to the commitments we made in the strategy. It is never enough to simply say we have a strategy. Government carries a duty here, and civil society must keep asking: to what extent are you being held accountable for your commitments?"

Where laws meet lived reality

Dr Hazel Gooding, UN Women South Africa's Deputy Representative, grounded the discussion in global evidence. Drawing on UN Women's global database on violence against women and girls  - which tracks more than 7,500 measures self-reported by 194 member states - she noted that while two in three states report adopting broad measures to strengthen access to justice for survivors, the reality behind that figure is far weaker: fewer than one in three states report operational one-stop centres, fewer than one in two report functioning referral mechanisms, and only 22 percent report legal aid measures specific to GBV cases.

"Legislation alone does not protect anyone. What determines whether a survivor gets help or gets turned away is whether the law is properly designed, whether frontline workers are trained to implement it, whether services are accessible, and whether the system is coordinated enough to move a person from disclosure through support and, where appropriate, justice,” Gooding said. She also stressed that survivors themselves must be part of shaping the Council's decisions, not consulted at the margins. "People with lived experience of gender-based violence understand where the system fails in ways no review process can fully capture. That input cannot sit on the margins of the Council's work - it needs to be built into how decisions are made."

She closed with a call to keep prevention central to the Council's mandate. "The work of engaging men and boys, of addressing the norms that produce violence rather than only managing its consequences, is not a soft complement to the hard work of justice; it is part of the same effort."

What needs to change

The scorecard sets out eight priority reforms, including:

• Introducing binding duties for all spheres of government, backed by compulsory reporting and data-sharing
• Rebalancing the Council's governance to ensure civil society parity and protect its independence
• Guaranteeing representation for survivor-led organisations and groups representing LGBTQIA+ persons, people with disabilities, youth, rural communities, sex workers, and migrant and refugee women
• Securing predictable, ring-fenced funding for the Council and the GBVF Fund
• Setting minimum survivor-centred service standards and safe reporting channels
• Establishing standard indicators, disaggregated data, and public reporting dashboards
• Fast-tracking the Council's own establishment through clear transitional timelines

Looking ahead

The dialogue, convened by Sonke Gender Justice with support from UN Women and the Embassy of Ireland, was framed not as a critique for its own sake but as a starting point for engagement with the Government. As Khumalo put it, the intention "was not to simply point fingers, but to call attention to where the gaps are, so that together we can chart a path to the results we all want to see." For UN Women, the scorecard reinforces a message it continues to bring to policymakers across contexts: legal frameworks are necessary, but never sufficient. As the National Council on GBVF begins its work, the challenge and the opportunity will be to close the distance between what the law promises and what survivors experience when they reach out for help.

The scorecard can be downloaded here.

The Scorecard on the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Act of 2024 was developed by the South African NPO, Sonke Gender Justice, supported by UN Women South Africa Country Office – funded by the Government of Ireland.