Focus Group Discussion on Gender Based Violence
16 July 2019
Hotel Primera
Participants:
Philippine National Police – Women and Children Protection Division Investigators and Clerks
Barangay Kagawad, Barangay Putik
Zamboanga City Local Government Unit (LGU), GAD Secretariat
LGU, CMO-GAD
Zamboanga City Medical Center – Women and Children Protection Unit
“Make data work for women: Mapping of Legal Referral Mechanisms on Gender-Based
Violence”
Preliminaries through Audio Visual Presentations followed by a brief introduction on the FGD
given by Ronael Ventus wherein he said that the activity is with the CHR’s Center for Gender
Equality in Manila. He also shared that this is the first part of the FGD of Service Providers and
that the next part will take place in Dapitan, Dipolog City. Ventus briefly discussed the objective
of the activity, “we look into the process flow with regards to the GPV (Gender Violence Cases”
which focuses on the Rape and RA 9262 cases only since according to CHR and PNP records,
the bulk of the handled cases are that of the RA 9262. He also added that the FGD will look into
the challenges with regards to access to justice for women who are victims of VAWC and the
better practices of the process. He also said that after the series of FGDs, a mapping on the
referral process will be done by the Commission and that the results of the FGD is going to be
presented in the upcoming Regional Gender and Development (GAD) Summit this coming
November 2019. Thereafter, an Audio Visual Presentation for an overview of the FGD was
shown.
Atty. Judelyn Macapili thoroughly explained the objective of the FGD wherein she said that it
was a follow up activity from the June 25 Community Dialogue on Women wherein the GPV
cases were reviewed by the Commission specifically on how the cases are referred to and by
agencies to other agencies. She also emphasized that the team would like to review the referral
mechanism particularly on what available facilities, other services, the quality of services
provided by the participating agencies to the clients and if they are able to provide the
necessary support needed by the clients. Atty. Macapili also put emphasis that the other
objective of the FGD is “to be able Identify the barriers and challenges on referral legal
mechanisms so that we can provide recommendations that will further develop the services…”
She ended her talk by sharing that the stakeholders are going to be informed and consulted with
the gathered results of the FGD up until implementation, there be.
The FGD was primarily facilitated by Atty. Macapili and assisted by Ms. Vela,
Investigator. For the first question, she asked the participants on the Gender Equality