Ramaphosa Declares Gender-Based Violence a National Crisis at G20 Summit

Ramaphosa Declares Gender-Based Violence a National Crisis at G20 Summit

EKURHULENI, 20 November 2025. President Cyril Ramaphosa declared gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) a national crisis on Thursday at the G20 Social Summit held at the Birchwood Hotel and OR Tambo Conference Centre in Ekurhuleni, responding to sustained pressure from civil society and more than one million South Africans who signed a petition calling for the designation.

Ramaphosa announced that he had "heard the cry from women across the country" and that the government would treat GBVF as a national crisis requiring coordinated emergency intervention. The declaration enables government departments, including Social Development, Justice, Health, Police and Basic Education, to redirect allocated budgets toward the Emergency Response Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, which was first announced in 2019 but had received limited dedicated funding.

The declaration followed a campaign led by civil society organisation Women for Change, whose petition exceeded one million signatures in the weeks preceding the G20 summit. On 21 November, the day after Ramaphosa's announcement, tens of thousands of women, students, and civil society members staged a coordinated national Women's Shutdown, gathering in towns and cities across South Africa dressed in black and purple as symbols of mourning and solidarity. At the Union Buildings in Pretoria, participants lay in silence at midday to honour women killed each day in South Africa.

The classification as a national crisis is expected to allow faster emergency resource allocation for survivor services, expanded access to shelters and safe spaces, psycho-social counselling, and community-based prevention programmes. Critics noted, however, that the declaration was made under national crisis provisions rather than the Disaster Management Act, meaning certain emergency procurement and resource-mobilisation mechanisms available under the Act would not automatically apply.

South Africa records among the highest rates of femicide in the world. Police statistics released earlier in 2025 showed that more than 2,700 women were murdered in the country in the preceding year, with a significant proportion of cases linked to intimate partner violence.

The Emergency Response Action Plan on GBVF was originally launched following a national Women's March in September 2019 and promised a range of legislative, judicial, and social interventions. Implementation had been described by civil society organisations as uneven in the years since.