We are taking the South African government to court over the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Act.

This is not a decision we have taken lightly. It is one we have arrived at after six years of good-faith engagement: summits, consultations, signed declarations, and a National Strategic Plan developed after robust engagement and contribution from civil society across all nine provinces.

The NCGBVF Act, signed into law in May 2024, was meant to give institutional force to those commitments. Instead, it abandons them. The Act omits a dedicated funding framework. It removes presidential oversight. It reduces civil society representation on the Council. It strips out the Inter-Ministerial Committee designed to coordinate government action. It makes no provision for provincial or local government structures. And it sets no timelines for the regulations that would give the law any real force. 

The net effect is a Council that cannot effectively coordinate the various state agencies working on GBVF and therefore cannot ensure accountability for the prevention and response to GBVF. South Africa's Constitution is unambiguous: the state must protect, promote and fulfil the right to be free from violence. This is not a passive obligation, the State must take active, effective, and adequately resourced measures to protect women and gender non-conforming people from GBVF. International law, including CEDAW, the

Maputo Protocol and the African Charter, reinforces this. The CEDAW Committee has already raised concerns about South Africa's weak enforcement, insufficient funding, and fragmented coordination. The state made promises to the women of South Africa through years of public consultation. It broke them, not by an oversight, but through deliberate legislative choices made without adequate public participation.

We are going to court on two grounds:

1.  The state violated its constitutional duty to protect women from GBVF by enacting a law incapable of doing so; and

2.  The Act fails to establish the accountable, resourced institutions the NSP demanded.

This case is about accountability. It is about whether a government can make solemn commitments to its people, commitments extracted through years of marches, protests, and painstaking consultation, and simply walk away from them. The women of South Africa cannot wait any longer. The fight continues.

Read our Case Documents 

Complete Case Documents - Case No 2026/220533

Read our Statements and Press Releases 

Civil Society Statement on the propos/ed Implementation of the GBVF Council Act (Act No. 9 of 2024)