 And women across the world are subjected to physical, sexual, psychological and economic violence regardless of their income, age or education. Such violence can lead to long-term physical, mental and emotional health problems. Around one-third of women worldwide have experienced physical and or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives. Details in this report. Gender-based violence happens in secret, behind closed doors, often in women's home homes. According to a 2020 study, about 44% of African women experience gender-based violence. At least 200 million women and girls aged 14 to 49 years have undergone female genital mutilation in 31 countries where the practice is concentrated. Half of these countries are in West Africa. The Spotlight Initiative is a global partnership between the United Nations, the European Union and the African Union to end violence against women and girls, specifically female genital mutilation, child marriage and other harmful practices. The ANA Review and Learning workshop brought together Government officials, civil society representatives and development partners from across Africa to discuss and identify new ways to accelerate progress. Africa has some challenges which has paced the eradication of gender-based violence. There are a number of challenges in Africa and one of that given the fact that Africa is highly a patriarchal community now where most of the communities with high levels of patriarchy, we've experienced high levels of gender-based violence. We are optimistic that the trend is changing from the past experiences but we still need a lot of work to do. Of course gender-based violence is wide, it's not just the physical, it's the emotional, it's the psychological, so those are some of the reasons. And also we also have our religious systems that have also not been very favourable in terms of bringing about gender equality. Raising the awareness on violence against women requires using all systems available to effectively educate young and old. In our system for example in the cultural system we utilize all platforms and address issues of domestic violence. We use festivals, we use events that we all create ourselves, we use training programs. Recently we even started using school visits and you wouldn't believe it but in Ghana for example now even traditional leadership go out of their ways, leave their palaces and travel to schools within their communities to engage with the younger ones. The power and purples of civil groups cannot be underestimated in achieving this goal. We cannot say the success of spotlight without mentioning the civil society. The government couldn't do it, there are some policies that we need to push but government cannot go into fight with government, we need the civil society. The workshop provided participants with insight and strategies that will enable the design of more effective interventions against gender-based violence and harmful practices in Africa. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.