World Health Organization 5 th Milestones Meeting Cape Town, South Africa Next Steps in Violence Prevention: Strategi

1. World Health Organization5th Milestones MeetingCape Town, South AfricaNext Steps in Violence Prevention: Strategic Considerations Gordon F. Phaneuf, MSW, RSW Director of Strategic Initiatives Child Welfare League of Canada

2. “Violence prevention has not yet attained political traction.” Etienne Krug

3. Need to: Entrench the issue of violence prevention within governmental structures Make the case for “prevention investments” Advocate for the establishment of dedicated departments or governmental leads for the “file”

4. Maintaining violence prevention as a public policy priority requires the conventional array of advocacy measures, including: • Calling for and participating in relevant Public Hearings. - Putting the issue on the agenda. - Developing a narrative(s) that captures the essence of the issue and communicating why it is compelling. • Messaging the issue in digestible sound bites, eg “Violence is preventable”. - Highlighting successes, underscoring what works.

5. Optimizing the use of champions, eg. UNICEF Danny Glover, Nicole Kidman, etc. • Encouraging and facilitating public engagement. • Pursuing partnerships, coalitions, and alliances that are supportive of common goals. • Need to recognize that the salience of an issue corresponds directly to the breadth and conviction of the constituencies involved in promoting it. • Violence Prevention needs to be a public policy priority at all levels of government: international, national, state/provincial, regional and municipal.

6. Strengthen Cross-Sectoral Collaboration Collaboration across sectors is vitally important . The impact of violence affects all sectors of society Burden of prevention + response needs to shared across sectors. - Cross-sectoral approaches should be inclusive of: government, NGO, voluntary, research, professional, and corporate sectors and faith communities. -

7. Strengthen Cross-Sectoral Collaboration Involvement of the corporate sector is advantageous on many fronts: • It lends credibility; • indicative of the “maturity” of the issue; • assists with leveraging financial resources from government; • implicitly affirms that corporate sector should assume some measure of responsibility for the response burden.

8. Importance and Value of National Strategies Uniquely effective at raising public awareness. Provide a context for understanding the issue at hand – governmental strategies are first and foremost about defining the issue. Provide a platform for advocating for legislative change. Provide the opportunity for a rational discussion on the possible use of sanctions. Enhance the profile of the issue. Opportunity to address jurisdictional and sectoral issue.

9. In the public sector issue salience is critically important. • In the words of the Chinese proverb, the visibility of the issue of violence prevention is like: • “Rowing upstream not to advance is to drop back”