National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Act, 2024

The text provided is not a court judgment but an Act of Parliament published in the Government Gazette. The Act was assented to by the President on 24 May 2024 and published on 27 May 2024. It establishes the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide as a statutory body to provide strategic leadership and coordination in preventing and responding to gender-based violence and femicide in South Africa. The Act creates a governance framework for the Council, including its Board, committees, Chief Executive Officer, Secretariat, funding, reporting, provincial and local coordination, and regulation-making powers. The Act is expressly aimed at giving effect to constitutional values and rights, particularly dignity, equality, life, freedom and security of the person, and to support a whole-of-society and multi-sectoral response to gender-based violence and femicide.

• No adjudicated legal issues arise because the text is legislation, not a judicial decision.
• What statutory framework should govern the establishment, objects, functions, governance and accountability of the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide?
• How should national, provincial and local coordination on gender-based violence and femicide be structured in law?
• What institutional mechanisms should be created to give practical effect to constitutional commitments to dignity, equality, security of the person, non-racialism and non-sexism in the context of gender-based violence and femicide?

The National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Act, 2024 was enacted, assented to on 24 May 2024, and published for general information in Government Gazette No. 50712 on 27 May 2024. It comes into operation on a date determined by the President by proclamation in the Gazette.

Not applicable. There is no ratio decidendi because this is not a judicial decision. The closest equivalent is the legislative principle that combating gender-based violence and femicide requires a statutory, coordinated, multi-sectoral and inter-sectoral governance framework with defined leadership, accountability, reporting and oversight mechanisms aligned to constitutional rights and national strategy.

Not applicable. There is no obiter dicta because the text is not a court judgment and contains no judicial observations.

The Act is significant because it creates a formal statutory institution to coordinate South Africa's response to gender-based violence and femicide. It translates constitutional commitments to equality, dignity, life and security of the person into an institutional governance framework. It also embeds multi-sectoral coordination, reporting, financial accountability and intergovernmental alignment into the state response to GBVF, thereby strengthening the implementation architecture for the National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide and related state obligations.