16 Days of Ac­tivism Against Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence

Fay­ola KJ Fras­er

Launched in 2008 by the Unit­ed Na­tions, the 16 Days of Ac­tivism Against Gen­der-based Vi­o­lence (GBV) cam­paign was birthed to raise aware­ness and call on gov­ern­ments, civ­il so­ci­ety, women’s or­gan­i­sa­tions, and the pri­vate sec­tor to make re­al strides against the per­va­sive so­ci­etal ill of GBV.

The glob­al theme of this year’s 16 Days (from No­vem­ber 25 to De­cem­ber 10) is “UNITE! In­vest to pre­vent vi­o­lence against women and girls,” a spe­cif­ic and di­rect call to urge in­vest­ments in so­lu­tions. Ac­cord­ing to UN sta­tis­tics, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, more than five women or girls are killed every hour by some­one in their fam­i­ly, near­ly one in five women aged 20-24 were mar­ried be­fore the age of 18, and one in three women have been sub­ject­ed to vi­o­lence at least once in their life­time. These sta­tis­tics are jar­ring, mir­ror­ing the need for ur­gency in ac­tion on GBV.

In the Caribbean, a va­ri­ety of in­her­it­ed pa­tri­ar­chal norms along­side ac­cept­ed cul­tur­al be­hav­iours make GBV more press­ing than ever. In 2019, ac­cord­ing to the At­lantic Coun­cil, five of the top 20 coun­tries’ record­ed rape rates were Caribbean na­tions.

More­over, re­search from UN Women sug­gests that 46 per cent of women in the Caribbean have ex­pe­ri­enced at least one form of vi­o­lence in their life­time. In 2021, the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Don­na Cox, stat­ed that in T&T in 2020, there were 556 re­port­ed cas­es of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, with the num­ber in­creas­ing to 826 in 2021.

Cox al­so stat­ed that “one case of vi­o­lence against a woman is too many … We must as­sert that vi­o­lence against any woman is vi­o­lence against all of so­ci­ety.”

One of the sub­ject-mat­ter ex­perts and fem­i­nists lead­ing the charge against GBV is a Caribbean woman, Paige An­drew. She is the chief of pro­grams at FRI­DA–The Young Fem­i­nist Fund, fo­cus­ing on Grant­mak­ing and Op­er­a­tions, and is the fo­cal point for groups in the Caribbean Re­gion.

For al­most a decade, she has been in­volved in fem­i­nist-cen­tered ac­tivism. Her work is ori­ent­ed around hu­man rights ac­tivism in Ja­maica, with a fo­cus on vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, such as LGBTQIA peo­ple, and sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health and rights of women. She is the co-founder of a women’s rights or­gan­i­sa­tion called WE-Change Ja­maica, which has, for the past six years, worked on var­i­ous projects re­lat­ed to ed­u­ca­tion around GBV.

An­drew is an ac­com­plished aca­d­e­m­ic and a Ful­bright Schol­ar, with a BA in In­te­grat­ed Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tions from UWI, Mona and an MA in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and De­vel­op­ment from Ohio Uni­ver­si­ty.

In her ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence in the ex­plo­ration of GBV, she notes the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing that GBV does not take one shape or size and can range from sex­u­al ha­rass­ment (ver­bal or phys­i­cal), emo­tion­al abuse and stalk­ing, to sex­u­al and phys­i­cal vi­o­lence. Cen­tral­is­ing the re­al­i­ty of the pa­tri­ar­chal na­ture of most Caribbean coun­tries, she ex­plains that “GBV is root­ed in pow­er, rather than gen­der.” This means that the pow­er har­nessed by men more than women in our re­gion al­lows GBV to be most­ly per­pe­trat­ed against women. She al­so notes that GBV is not sole­ly rel­e­gat­ed to het­ero­sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships, and in many in­stances, trans women and peo­ple in same-sex re­la­tion­ships al­so can be sub­ject to it.

Spe­cif­ic to the lo­cal con­text, An­drew’s re­search has led her to dive deep­er in­to the na­ture of GBV in T&T. “Many peo­ple do not un­der­stand GBV to be vi­o­lence,” she says, “and (as a so­ci­ety) we are not en­cour­aged to speak up about vi­o­lence–es­pe­cial­ly when per­pe­trat­ed in pri­vate spaces.” In her in­ter­views and dis­cus­sions with vul­ner­a­ble women, the de­sen­si­ti­sa­tion of vi­o­lence in our coun­try is a ma­jor cause of the prob­lem.

For ex­am­ple, giv­ing lit­tle, pow­er­less chil­dren ‘licks’ as a form of dis­ci­pline is so in­grained in our so­ci­etal fab­ric, it teach­es chil­dren that they can and should be beat­en, and not speak up about it. In oth­er cas­es, if co-work­ers, friends, fam­i­ly or com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers are aware that a man is beat­ing his wife, they of­ten turn a blind eye, say­ing “that is man and woman busi­ness.” An­drew fur­ther states that in in­stances of stalk­ing and sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, the sit­u­a­tion is of­ten laughed off or not seen as vi­o­lence. “In­stead, you hear that boys will be boys, which lat­er on trans­lates to some sort of ac­cep­tance that men will be vi­o­lent.” The con­ver­gence of these mul­ti­ple re­al­i­ties cre­ates a po­lar­is­ing and prob­lem­at­ic op­er­a­tional en­vi­ron­ment for women, where we have to not on­ly be afraid for our lives, but sim­i­lar­ly afraid of be­ing un­heard and un­seen if and when we speak up about it.

For­tu­nate­ly, An­drew’s work and re­search is not on­ly fo­cused on un­cov­er­ing the prob­lem but ad­vo­cat­ing for, and ad­vanc­ing, so­lu­tions. A change in pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial­i­sa­tion is key in the res­o­lu­tion of GBV, as re­mov­ing and re­think­ing strict gen­der norms that are taught at an ear­ly age and em­bed­ded in­to our cul­ture are an un­seen harm.

For ex­am­ple, young men and boys “soot­ing”, “whistling” or ha­rass­ing girls in pub­lic spaces is seen as a woman’s cross to bear but is, in fact, a gross re­flec­tion of un­trained men re­peat­ing cy­cles of bad be­hav­iour. She al­so in­sists on the im­por­tance of lib­er­at­ing our­selves from the per­cep­tion that dis­cussing sex­u­al health is taboo. Ed­u­cat­ing young peo­ple about sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health and rights, as well as GBV, is im­per­a­tive, so they can quick­ly and eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy un­ac­cept­able be­hav­iours and con­fi­dent­ly speak up about them. Hav­ing safe spaces for sur­vivors’ heal­ing and rein­te­gra­tion is al­so a key so­lu­tion, along with the ed­u­ca­tion of pre­ven­tion and sup­port work­ers.

Po­lice of­fi­cers, health­care work­ers and oth­er ac­tors in pub­lic-fac­ing in­sti­tu­tions should know how to iden­ti­fy a vic­tim and sup­port them in get­ting the nec­es­sary help. Fi­nal­ly, she sug­gests that per­pe­tra­tors should be in­clud­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion, as with­out sup­port in the form of ed­u­ca­tion or coun­selling, they will con­tin­ue to per­pe­trate GBV.

The fight to end the scourge of GBV re­quires an all-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach. At the gov­ern­men­tal lev­el, Caribbean coun­tries should en­sure the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­tec­tive laws for sur­vivors and eq­ui­table and ac­ces­si­ble safe spaces for their pro­tec­tion and heal­ing. There is al­so a need for part­ner­ship with grass­roots or­gan­i­sa­tions and NGOs on the ground, to en­sure that laws and poli­cies are cre­at­ed with the con­tex­tu­al re­al­i­ties at the core.

At the grass­roots lev­el, com­mu­ni­ties should come to­geth­er to form sup­port groups for sur­vivors and or­gan­ise ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness cam­paigns for vul­ner­a­ble groups who may not be high­ly pri­ori­tised. In T&T and the wider Caribbean, many diplo­mat­ic for­eign mis­sions, in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties have tak­en the lead to part­ner with NGOs and ded­i­cate re­sources to work sur­round­ing GBV. We need more of this sus­tained ef­fort.

Paige An­drew is a schol­ar, fem­i­nist, and ac­tor in the space of hu­man rights & GBV is­sues, who calls us as a so­ci­ety and a re­gion to ac­tion. These 16 Days of Ac­tivism against GBV are an op­por­tu­ni­ty to not on­ly ad­vo­cate for an end to vi­o­lence against women and girls but to al­so ho­n­our the lives of peo­ple lost to GBV. Be­yond this pe­ri­od, the hope is that GBV will not be for­got­ten, rel­e­gat­ed to the side­lines of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al agen­das un­til next No­vem­ber, but re­main top of mind. It is a cri­sis re­quir­ing us to “name it for what it is, take small ac­tions to curb its oc­cur­rence, teach chil­dren around us to do bet­ter, and hold those in pow­er ac­count­able to en­sur­ing pro­tec­tion and well­ness for all women.”