Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for Gen­der and Child Af­fairs in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy said there has been a 42 per cent in­crease in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports since 2021.

In her ad­dress at a two-day Spot­light Ini­tia­tive Tran­si­tion Con­fer­ence at the Hilton Trinidad Cen­tral Ho­tel yes­ter­day, Web­ster Roy said da­ta showed that for this year so far the Crime and Analy­sis Branch of the Po­lice Ser­vice (CA­PA) record­ed 1968 cas­es, with girls and women dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed.

“The da­ta demon­strate the youth­ful­ness of this phe­nom­e­non with most of the vic­tim rang­ing form 15 to 35 years of age,” she said.

Web­ster-Roy said while the sta­tis­tics are dis­heart­en­ing, through the pow­er of col­lab­o­ra­tion, util­is­ing the Spot­light Ini­tia­tive, strides have been made in the fight against gen­der-based vi­o­lence (GBV).

The Spot­light Ini­tia­tive is a glob­al mul­ti-year part­ner­ship be­tween the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) and the Unit­ed Na­tions to elim­i­nate all forms of vi­o­lence against women and girls by 2030.

Na­tion­al cham­pi­on and women’s rights ad­vo­cate Sharon Row­ley named some of the Spot­light’s ac­com­plish­ments as its en­ters it’s sec­ond phase.

She high­light­ed the Cab­i­net’s ap­proval of a Na­tion­al Strate­gic Ac­tion Plan on Gen­der Based and Sex­u­al Vi­o­lence, amend­ments to the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act, up­grade of the GBV reg­istry, the de­vel­op­ment and launch of the Na­tion­al In­ter-Agency Pro­to­col of Child Abuse, pre­ven­tion and man­age­ment and digi­ti­sa­tion of the Na­tion­al Child Pol­i­cy.

Row­ley al­so men­tioned the work in the Caribbean through Foun­da­tions Pro­gramme, a joint work place pol­i­cy and the GBV cur­ricu­lum at 40 schools which she said has “im­pact­ed more than 9000 stu­dents.”

She al­so high­light­ed the Spot­light Ini­tia­tive’s work with the non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion ICANN and what she de­scribed at their biggest ac­com­plish­ment so far, the Na­tion­al Clin­i­cal and Pol­i­cy Guide­lines on In­ti­mate Part­ner Vi­o­lence (IPV) and Sex­u­al Vi­o­lence (SV).

“Through the Spot­light Ini­tia­tive we have em­barked on a jour­ney to what some cyn­i­cal­ly called eu­topia a place where it is hoped that we will even­tu­al­ly see the elim­i­nate of gen­der based vi­o­lence we will achieve gen­der equal­i­ty and we will ex­pe­ri­ence the em­pow­er­ment of all women and girls in our so­ci­ety. We want to see every girl reach their full po­ten­tial,” she said.

Row­ley called for an all hands on deck ap­proach and urged stake­hold­ers to judge the Spot­light Ini­tia­tive by it’s work.

“Come 2024 the Eu­ro­pean union will no longer car­ry us on it’s shoul­ders, and while this sig­ni­fies that we must aim to be­come fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent,” she said.