Rashan­da Mc Ken­na

A new Women Rights Bill will strength­en ex­ist­ing laws for the pro­tec­tion of women against sex­u­al abuse and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, Romona Ram­di­al yes­ter­day in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian.

Ram­di­al said the pur­pose of up­grad­ing the cur­rent laws was to strength­en ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion and erad­i­cate cur­rent flaws with­in the jus­tice sys­tem with re­gard to the pro­tec­tion of women's rights. The Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment is the first of its kind in the T&T his­to­ry and plans are to in­tro­duce the new bill in Par­lia­ment with­in the next year.

"For a long time leg­is­la­tion was stag­nat­ed due to the fact that the last gen­der unit was rel­a­tive­ly in­sub­stan­tial," said Ram­di­al. She re­vealed the women's unit of the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at has draft­ed a code for the pro­tec­tion of women based on in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised stan­dards set by the Unit­ed Na­tions.

Ram­di­al hoped this mod­el, first pre­sent­ed by the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, would serve as a pat­tern for T&T. She high­light­ed the fact that there are dif­fer­ent pieces of leg­is­la­tion un­der dif­fer­ent acts which pro­vide lim­it­ed re­dress for women in T&T.

There is no com­pre­hen­sive laws which cov­ers the scope of women's rights to deal with all the is­sues that af­fect the group, such as sex­u­al, emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal and men­tal abuse; and oth­er is­sues ref­er­enced on the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act of 1999 which was amend­ed in 2006.

She sug­gest­ed that cur­rent le­gal pro­vi­sions were an­ti­quat­ed and do not ad­dress con­tem­po­rary is­sues of abuse. Ram­di­al said spe­cif­ic safe­ty nets such as pro­tec­tion or­ders are in­tend­ed to act as bar­ri­ers against do­mes­tic abuse but are not fences made of steel, as cer­tain vic­tims were killed af­ter re­ceiv­ing pro­tec­tion or­ders in the low­er courts.

Ram­di­al said there was more to be done in terms of con­flict­ing leg­is­la­tion which are hin­drances to the in­tend­ed pur­pose of the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act. One such hur­dle is Sec­tion Two of the Firearms Act of 1979 which pro­hibits the use of pep­per spray she said. Ram­di­al said in the Unit­ed States, such ac­tions are le­gal and re­gard­ed as im­por­tant for women who are al­lowed to use it to pro­tect them­selves.

"These are some of the changes we need in Trinidad," said Ram­di­al. She stat­ed the new min­istry is seek­ing to act swift­ly to in­clude all of the mech­a­nisms of pro­tec­tion, but the fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge was gath­er­ing the vast body of in­for­ma­tion to in­form the amend­ments to be made.

Ram­di­al said the min­istry plans to hold in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al talks with in­flu­en­tial per­sons in­clud­ing Hazel Brown and Mar­garet Samp­son-Brown. She said get­ting stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions with NGOs are un­der­way and have proven to be a ma­jor chal­lenge along­side the lim­it­ed ca­pa­bil­i­ties of re­lat­ed min­istries, such as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of the Peo­ple.

Ram­di­al point­ed to re­cur­ring in­con­sis­ten­cies with­in the sys­tem which she said are in con­flict with and ob­struct the roles of min­istries. "Pro­tec­tion should be more than just im­pris­on­ment for the per­pe­tra­tors, pro­tec­tion or­ders and fines," said Ram­di­al.

She not­ed that 13 cen­tres of heal­ing for bat­tered women and chil­dren will soon be es­tab­lished coun­try-wide and will be used as re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion homes and in­sti­tutes of heal­ing. The min­istry is cur­rent­ly in talks with the fam­i­ly court in an ef­fort to iden­ti­fy land for this pur­pose so that con­struc­tion can be­gin by the end of 2013.

Ram­di­al not­ed that fund­ing will be dis­bursed by the Fi­nance Min­istry's Pub­lic Sec­tor Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme al­though fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies are not yet com­plet­ed.