Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

There have been over 552 re­port­ed cas­es of sex­u­al of­fences for the year with women mak­ing up the ma­jor­i­ty of the cas­es. Of these re­port­ed cas­es, 92 have been rape.

Speak­ing at a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and in­for­ma­tion fair at City Gate, Port-of-Spain, which com­mem­o­rat­ed the 16 Days of Ac­tivism against gen­der-based vi­o­lence, Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy re­vealed the fig­ures cit­ing of­fi­cial po­lice sta­tis­tics.

But the is­sue of gen­der-based vi­o­lence against women is not iso­lat­ed to T&T on­ly as she al­so cit­ed World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion sta­tis­tics which show that one in three women around the world will ex­pe­ri­ence some form of gen­der-based vi­o­lence in her life­time.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, vi­o­lence against women and girls, is one of the most wide­spread, per­sis­tent and dev­as­tat­ing hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in our world to­day. Re­gret­tably, it re­mains large­ly un­re­port­ed due to the im­puni­ty, si­lence, stig­ma and shame sur­round­ing it,” she said.

To solve this, she added, a cul­ture of jus­tice and a mul­ti-pronged sys­tem for vic­tims of rape and vi­o­lence must be de­vel­oped.

She al­so not­ed that a Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy on Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment was cre­at­ed to fight gen­der dis­par­i­ties in the coun­try. Ac­cord­ing to Web­ster-Roy, it has a the­mat­ic fo­cus on hu­man se­cu­ri­ty and gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

“While the pol­i­cy has been laid in the Par­lia­ment as a Green Pa­per it is the foun­da­tion on which our work in the Gen­der Af­fairs stands,” she said.

She be­lieves that “em­pow­er­ing our men to be­come al­lies in the cam­paign to com­bat vi­o­lence against women and girls is crit­i­cal for pro­mot­ing the trans­for­ma­tion and shift in so­cio-cul­tur­al per­cep­tion or women and girls.”

Web­ster-Roy stressed: “We must re­spect and pro­mote the fact that no means no.”