Jan­nelle Bernard

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for gen­der and child af­fairs, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, is mak­ing a clar­i­on call for vic­tims of gen­der-based vi­o­lence to seek help. Web­ster Roy ac­knowl­edges that do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is not lim­it­ed to women and girls but says women are the main vic­tims.

She was speak­ing on Thurs­day at a one-off grant dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny aimed at as­sist­ing civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions in con­duct­ing pro­grammes that pro­mote gen­der equal­i­ty and child de­vel­op­ment.

She said, “Gen­der-based vi­o­lence con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge, pre­dom­i­nant­ly af­fect­ing all women and all girls. And we are not say­ing that men aren’t af­fect­ed. We are just ac­knowl­edg­ing that women and girls are pre­dom­i­nant­ly af­fect­ed. It is root­ed in gen­der in­equal­i­ty and is one of the most preva­lent hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions.”

She added that gen­der-based vi­o­lence did not take place on­ly in the low­er so­cioe­co­nom­ic de­mo­graph­ics of so­ci­ety but tran­scend­ed all class­es and eco­nom­ic back­grounds.

“Gen­der-based vi­o­lence is not lim­it­ed to fi­nan­cial­ly de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties but is found in every stra­ta of our so­ci­ety.

Of course, we ac­knowl­edge that men are vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence as well, and the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go seeks to cre­ate a so­ci­ety where abused men and boys have safe spaces to re­port, re­ceive re­lief, and start a new chap­ter of their lives. That is why we es­tab­lished the Men’s Bu­reau so that the men’s is­sues are ad­dressed in a sys­tem­at­ic, in­te­grat­ed, and pro­fes­sion­al man­ner.”

And says it re­quires an all-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach if there are to be sig­nif­i­cant changes.

Twelve or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als re­ceived $163,000 in one-off grants, as well as 48 dig­ni­ty kits con­tain­ing es­sen­tial sup­plies for women and girls, which were do­nat­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions Pop­u­la­tion Fund.

Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ue to join with the rest of the world in ob­serv­ing six­teen days of ac­tivism aimed at bring­ing aware­ness and an end to gen­der-based vi­o­lence.