In­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Rights Day is now just two days away.
Hu­man Rights Day is ob­served every year on De­cem­ber 10— the day the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly adopt­ed, in 1948, the Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights (UDHR).

The UDHR is a mile­stone doc­u­ment, which pro­claims the in­alien­able rights that every­one is en­ti­tled to as a hu­man be­ing, re­gard­less of race, colour, re­li­gion, sex, lan­guage, po­lit­i­cal or oth­er opin­ion, na­tion­al or so­cial ori­gin, prop­er­ty, birth, or oth­er sta­tus.
This year’s theme is Dig­ni­ty, Free­dom, and Jus­tice for All.

Sat­ur­day al­so sig­nals the end of 16 days of ac­tivism against gen­der-based vi­o­lence which is an an­nu­al cam­paign that be­gins on No­vem­ber 25, the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for the Elim­i­na­tion of Vi­o­lence against Women.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions vi­o­lence against women and girls re­mains the most per­va­sive hu­man rights vi­o­la­tion around the world.
More than one in three women ex­pe­ri­ence gen­der-based vi­o­lence dur­ing their life­time, the UN states.
And, un­for­tu­nate­ly, less than 40 per cent of women who ex­pe­ri­ence vi­o­lence seek the help of any sort.

Founder and chair­man of Re­gency Re­cruit­ment and Re­sources Ltd Lara Quen­trall-Thomas says she be­lieves it is in­te­gral for a work­place pol­i­cy to be es­tab­lished.

“It’s es­sen­tial be­cause of the sta­tis­tics, the fact that one in five women in the last year has ex­pe­ri­enced vi­o­lence at the hands of an in­ti­mate part­ner, and, of course, we know it’s not just women and girls but they are the ma­jor­i­ty of the vic­tims and it im­pacts pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, it im­pacts well­ness and not just of that in­di­vid­ual who is suf­fer­ing, but the en­tire team, the en­tire de­part­ment,” Quen­trall-Thomas said.

The Re­gency Re­cruit­ment chair­man added that this is an in­vest­ment worth mak­ing for any em­ploy­er.
“You want to make sure your peo­ple are hap­py, they have a safe space at work, they feel com­fort­able to come to work and they are sup­port­ed, and it’s not just right for them as hu­man be­ings, it’s good for busi­ness.”

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia she said that from her ex­pe­ri­ence with em­ploy­ers, “philo­soph­i­cal­ly, peo­ple are on board” but the chal­lenge comes with im­ple­men­ta­tion.

“Be­cause this is a top­ic fraught with shame and stig­ma and we don’t have a cul­ture of women who are vic­tims trust­ing au­thor­i­ties, trust­ing the po­lice, so this re­quires so many el­e­ments to shift where I can cre­ate a safe space here in my of­fice. But if I rec­om­mend some­one go speak to a third par­ty such as a coun­sel­lor or re­port the crime to po­lice, what then hap­pens?

“And es­pe­cial­ly for male vic­tims, stig­ma is much stronger so we have a cul­tur­al shift is need­ed.”
But the GBV work­place pol­i­cy is not just to of­fer ser­vices for those who are be­ing abused out­side of the of­fice, but to al­so pro­tect em­ploy­ees from their col­leagues.

“We are a vi­o­lent so­ci­ety.
This year has al­ready crossed the mile­stone for the blood­i­est year in the T&T his­to­ry with over 550 mur­ders al­ready be­ing com­mit­ted and still sev­er­al weeks to go be­fore we cel­e­brate the end of the year.

More than one in five peo­ple (al­most 23 per cent) in em­ploy­ment have ex­pe­ri­enced vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment at work, whether phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal or sex­u­al, ac­cord­ing to a new joint analy­sis, the first of its kind, by the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ILO), Lloyd’s Reg­is­ter Foun­da­tion (LRF) and Gallup.

The re­cent­ly re­leased “Ex­pe­ri­ences of Vi­o­lence and Ha­rass­ment at Work” re­port is the first glob­al sur­vey that pro­vides a sense of the ex­tent of the prob­lem and its dif­fer­ent forms.
The ILO-LRF-Gallup study was based on in­ter­views con­duct­ed in 2021 with near­ly 75,000 em­ployed in­di­vid­u­als aged 15 years or old­er in 121 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries, as part of the Lloyd’s Reg­is­ter Foun­da­tion World Risk Poll.

It al­so looks at the fac­tors that may pre­vent peo­ple from talk­ing about their ex­pe­ri­ences, in­clud­ing shame, guilt or a lack of trust in in­sti­tu­tions, or be­cause such un­ac­cept­able be­hav­iours are seen as “nor­mal”.

The re­al­i­ty is vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment at work are dif­fi­cult to mea­sure.

The re­port found that on­ly half of vic­tims world­wide had dis­closed their ex­pe­ri­ences to some­one else, and of­ten on­ly af­ter they had suf­fered more than one form of vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment.
The most com­mon rea­sons giv­en for non-dis­clo­sure were “waste of time” and “fear for their rep­u­ta­tion”.

Women were more like­ly to share their ex­pe­ri­ences than men (60.7 per cent com­pared to 50.1 per cent).

“Glob­al­ly, 17.9 per cent of em­ployed men and women said they had ex­pe­ri­enced psy­cho­log­i­cal vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment in their work­ing life, and 8.5 per cent had faced phys­i­cal vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment, with more men than women ex­pe­ri­enc­ing this.

“Of re­spon­dents, 6.3 per cent re­port­ed fac­ing sex­u­al vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment, with women be­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­posed,” it stat­ed.

The re­port stat­ed that young women were twice as like­ly as young men to have faced sex­u­al vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment, and mi­grant women were al­most twice as like­ly as non-mi­grant women to re­port sex­u­al vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment.

“More than three out of five vic­tims said they had ex­pe­ri­enced vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment at work mul­ti­ple times, and for the ma­jor­i­ty, the most re­cent in­ci­dent took place with­in the last five years,” it stat­ed.

“It’s painful to learn that peo­ple face vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment not just once but mul­ti­ple times in their work­ing lives,” said Manuela Tomei, ILO As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al for Gov­er­nance, Rights and Di­a­logue.

“Psy­cho­log­i­cal vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment are the most preva­lent across coun­tries and women are par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­posed to sex­u­al vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment. The re­port tells us about the enor­mi­ty of the task ahead to end vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment in the world of work. I hope it will ex­pe­dite ac­tion on the ground and to­wards the rat­i­fi­ca­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of ILO Con­ven­tion 190.”

The ILO’s Vi­o­lence and Ha­rass­ment Con­ven­tion, 2019 (No. 190) and Rec­om­men­da­tion (No. 206) are the first in­ter­na­tion­al labour stan­dards to pro­vide a com­mon frame­work to pre­vent, rem­e­dy and elim­i­nate vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment in the world of work, in­clud­ing gen­der-based vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment.

The Con­ven­tion in­cludes the spe­cif­ic recog­ni­tion, for the first time in in­ter­na­tion­al law, of the right of every­one to a world of work free from vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment, and sets out the oblig­a­tion to re­spect, pro­mote and re­alise this.

The re­port makes a range of rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing:

Reg­u­lar col­lec­tion of ro­bust da­ta on vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment at work, at na­tion­al, re­gion­al and glob­al lev­els, to in­form pre­ven­tion and re­me­di­a­tion laws and mech­a­nisms, poli­cies and pro­grammes, and re­search and ad­vo­ca­cy.

Ex­tend and up­date mech­a­nisms to ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent and man­age vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment in the world of work, in­clud­ing through labour in­spec­tion sys­tems and oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health poli­cies and pro­grammes.

In­crease aware­ness of vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment at work, in­clud­ing its dif­fer­ent man­i­fes­ta­tions, with a view to chang­ing per­cep­tions, stig­mas, at­ti­tudes and be­hav­iours that can per­pet­u­ate vi­o­lence and ha­rass­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly those based on dis­crim­i­na­tion.

En­hance the ca­pac­i­ty of in­sti­tu­tions at all lev­els to de­liv­er ef­fec­tive pre­ven­tion, re­me­di­a­tion and sup­port, to build peo­ple’s trust in jus­tice and en­sure vic­tims are sup­port­ed.