Planting the seed: The case for Early Intervention in Violence Prevention
South Africa continues to face high levels of interpersonal violence especially among women and children, and the evidence supports a shift towards stronger prevention efforts rather than response to address the issue.
South Africa continues to face high levels of interpersonal violence especially among women and children, and the evidence supports a shift towards stronger prevention efforts rather than response to address the issue.
It is with this foundation that the Violence Prevention for Peaceful and Inclusive Communities (VPPIC) programme convened a webinar titled Planting the seed: The case for Early Intervention in Violence Preventionon 06 May 2026. The webinar explored the economic cost of violence, why we cannot afford to not act early to prevent violence, approaches to resourcing violence prevention, lessons learned and what can be adapted for the South African context.
The webinar speakers included Lucy Jamieson from the Children’s Institute, Velisubuhle Buti from National Treasury, Carmen Abdoll from Cornerstone Economic Research, Megan Briede from Save the Children South Africa and Daniel Friedman from the New York University Centre on International Cooperation. Amongst attendees were representatives from government, civil society, development partners as well as academia and violence prevention practitioners.
“South Africa’s violence cost are equivalent to 9,4% of it’s GDP and violence prevention programmes can yield investment returns of about 5 to 15%, which highlights how early violence prevention interventions are cheaper in the long term” said Daniel Friedman. Other insights from panelists and participants emphasized the importance of close collaboration and cooperation between government, civil society and the larger community to ensure successful intervention especially considering the limited resources that are allocated to violence prevention programmes and initiatives.
Panellists also called for sustained investment in, and commitment to, violence prevention as results could only be achieved over a sustained period, which may not necessarily correspond with budgeting cycles.
“We need a period of sustained investment to get what we know to work, to actually work,” said Lucy Jamieson.
This webinar was the first in a webinar series that the VPPIC programme will be convening which aims to bring together different actors across the sector to tackle issues surrounding violence prevention and early childhood development.