If you work in an office where the number of women employed is at least 12, then according to the most recent statistics for the region, four of them would have been or will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex, verbally, mentally or emotionally abused. It is that bad. Moreover, if you look around a schoolyard of primary-age pupils, what you’re seeing is potential victims and their abusers unless steps are taken right now to address this epidemic.
During a meeting of the Pan American Health Organisation Directing Council in Washington last week, ministers of health and other officials agreed, among other things, that there was need to strengthen health systems to provide care and support to women who had experienced violence as well as to help prevent it from happening.
Gender-based violence is a global epidemic. It ranges from the pervasive gang rapes in India, to the prosecution and persecution of women who are raped in other parts of Asia and the Middle East; from the honour killings to the forced child marriages in all parts of the world; and from the physical battering at the hands of a cowardly partner to the daily verbal belittling that is almost a trend in this hemisphere.
It is a serious human rights violation and also a public health problem throughout the Americas, PAHO said in its report on the meeting last week. “This insidious violence crosses ethnicity, class, religion, socio-economic status, and race. It is one of the top human rights challenges of our time and we, the health sector, must respond,” US Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell was quoted as saying in the opening session of the Directing Council meeting.
Early yesterday morning, a 20-year-old mother of one was shot dead by her partner in the home she shared with her mother in Kitty. The man then turned the unlicensed 9 mm gun on himself and up to the time this column was completed, was a patient in the Georgetown Public Hospital. While tragic and startling this incident sadly amounts to yet another statistic. Guyana’s socio-economic landscape is littered with many similar such cases. What’s more, there are others brewing; cases in which the abuse has just started or is escalating to a tragic end.
Interventions in gender-based violence have been done at the governmental level by the former ministry of labour, human services and social security and at the non-government level by organisations such as Help and Shelter and Red Thread with varying success rates. At the government level it seemed that it was difficult for officials to comply with even their own laid-out policies. Relief that should have come into being following the passage of the Domestic Violence Act of 1996, languished on the back burner for close to two decades. In fact, it was not until February this year, 18 years after the passage of the legislation, that some of its regulations were finally gazetted and launched.
Over the years too, despite umpteen training programmes being held for police officers, there has been a distinct lack of professionalism in dealing with domestic violence reports. Observers have surmised that often, officers have knowingly and unknowingly judged victims and abusers injecting their own prejudiced beliefs into the situation.
There has also not been any real correlation between the human services and health sectors as proposed by the PAHO Directing Council last week, but it definitely warrants attention. Making the case for health practitioners to take the lead in curbing domestic violence, PAHO noted that in addition to physical injuries and death, such violence can lead to suicide, the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, amongst other things. Apart from the strain this places on the health system, earlier research has shown that there are also indirect costs on survivors, families, employers, and the broader society due to lost productivity and negative psychosocial consequences among women and their children.
PAHO emphasized too that, “Violence against women has important negative consequences for children. Evidence suggests that long-term health and social consequences of childhood exposure to intimate partner violence are similar to those of physical and emotional child abuse and neglect. In households affected by intimate partner violence, children are also more likely to experience harsh forms of physical punishment.”
Clearly addressing gender-based violence would allow for several other issues to be tackled simultaneously. The Directing Council meeting also noted that public health research has begun to identify promising prevention strategies, including challenging norms that perpetuate gender inequality and condone such violence, preventing child abuse against both boys and girls and reducing the harmful use of alcohol. These are all doable strategies which do not require the outlay of significant funds. Those in authority need to make a start now.
