Marsha Hinds is an advocate and the President of the National Organization of Women of Barbados. The National Organization of Women of Barbados (NOW) is the umbrella body for groups operating within the Women and Girl’s advocacy space on the Island. NOW has membership spanning faith based groups, health groups and others working with vulnerable girls.
The last time I registered, the count of people infected by COVID-19 in Barbados was somewhere around 80. I have given up on the sporadic manner in which the national information is being publicly shared. Instead of choosing to update the public on a daily basis, the politicians call random press conferences at random times. As if that was not bad enough, people sit at the appointed time and have to wait for another 40 minutes to an hour for the actual news conference to start. The news conferences themselves are focused on the numbers of new COVID cases, deaths, recoveries and issues of commerce. There are giant silences in the national debate around ‘the softer issues’, so imagine my surprise when a news item popped up in my newsfeed dated the 22nd April, 2020, indicating that Barbados was one of 144 countries that had committed to ending violence against women broadly and recognizing it as an acute problem arising out of efforts to fight the COVID pandemic. In response to a call to action issued by United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, Barbados joined 143 countries in signing onto a statement that partly read:
“More than ever, there needs to be zero tolerance for domestic violence. We commit to making prevention and redress of gender-based violence a key part of our national and global responses, including ensuring that information is available and that services are safely accessible. We pay tribute to social and health workers, civil society organisations as well as UN Women and other UN agencies for their important efforts to tackle this crisis.”
Perhaps the government of Barbados is sincere in wanting to change its approach to the way that domestic violence is treated on the Island. If that is true, then it is important that we start our analysis before the COVID-19 pandemic in order to adequately assess Barbados’ ability to live up to any commitment during this crisis. We can use the criteria set out by the Spotlight Initiative to get a clear understanding of where Barbados is with its response to domestic violence. The Spotlight Initiative, described as a global multi-partnership between the European Union and the United Nations, seeks to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls. In total the project represents a commitment of 500 million Euros and the work areas are developed from the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) that speaks to gender equality and women’s empowerment. In all of the country areas where the Initiative operates there are varying issues which are seen as the major ones the funding will address. They range from domestic and family violence, sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices to femicide, trafficking in human beings and sexual and economic (labour) exploitation.
The specific area of concentration in the Commonwealth Caribbean is domestic and family violence. There are 6 participating countries for the Spotlight Initiative: Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Grenada, Guyana and Haiti. Each of the participating countries will have local frameworks for the roll out of the project at the local level and have access to monetary and in-kind resources. Although Barbados can be included in the regional programme, it does not have a direct local Initiative. I want to explain the reason that Barbados has not been selected for the project because this time around it is not because of our economic positioning. The reasons are also a good analysis point from which to start the discussion about the ability to respond to domestic and intimate partner violence that already existed long before the COVID crisis. The reason that Barbados has not been included in the project, as far as I understand, is that there were six broad criteria used to assess the investment made by an individual country to fix the issue identified before funds would then be assigned to match and support the country’s effort. Barbados did not make the grade for a local programme based on the relative absence of infrastructure in each of the six areas, which to me reflects the absence of political will on the issue of domestic and family violence.
The areas used to select the countries chosen were the presence of a national prevention programme for domestic and family violence; institutions dedicated to domestic and family violence; the presence of law and policy on the issue; services; data collection; and the health of the women’s movement. While Barbados has made significant strides over the years, in the area of passing and improving laws that treat the matter of domestic violence, huge challenges remain with the way that those laws are interpreted and justice administered. There is also an absence of policy guidelines associated with the legislation. A prime example is the area of financial abuse where although the Domestic Violence (Protection Orders) Act provides a definition of financial abuse, there is no accompanying protocol that sets out how it should be investigated or how victims can seek remedy. There is also no minimum standard governing the services that victims of domestic violence receive. There is no coordination of services and there are woeful gaps in the services available. There is no single institution charged with addressing domestic violence in Barbados. At the level of the police there is one unit with a total of three officers to oversee family matters. The unit does not work 24 hours a day and is closed at specific peak times for domestic violence including weekends and evenings. The Welfare Department is meant to have programmes in anger management and counselling for perpetrators against whom protection orders are granted, and then there is the judicial response to domestic violence which ranges in style and approach from magistrate to magistrate and again between whether a matter is heard in high or low court. None of the institutions is running consistent and national level prevention programmes.
Perhaps the biggest indictment of the Barbados situation is that we do not have a mechanism for the collection of data on domestic violence. Although there was an attempt several years ago, we are no further with the collection of information on the epidemic of domestic violence in Barbados. This has significant implications for how we address the crisis. It also leaves us in the dark when trying to offer services to affected persons. There is some coordination of the women’s movement in Barbados but there is much room for improvement. The women’s movement is also not immune from the fact that generally the willingness to volunteer is low. Membership and recruitment constitute major work for all the groups under the umbrella of the National Organization of Women (NOW). Sensitization of women to their issues is also important and necessary work. With the challenges, this is perhaps the only requirement of the six that Barbados would readily meet.
These are some of the deficiencies that we came into the COVID pandemic with. Given this, what transpired in the crisis is not surprising. Women and children were left to bear the brunt of domestic and intimate partner violence with very few options for support. The first case I dealt with was on the first night of the lockdown, and involved two differently abled people who were locked out of their abode. A group of roving journalists who were developing a story on how the first night of lockdown was going came across the mother and her son on the road and contacted me. When I made contact with the family, I learnt that they were well known to authorities and had several interactions with agencies but had not been offered a coherent plan to be able to break the cycle of abuse. There were issues of poverty and the woman not having a solid support network to feel she could move past the abuse. While many had established that the woman’s son was differently abled, many did not realize she was also on the spectrum and needed support and facilitation. As far as I know at the time of writing this article, this woman and her son remain in a volatile family environment.
Another case that startled me during the lockdown was one in which the police evicted a mother with two boys. The woman had fled Barbados and the abusive relationship to try to re-establish her life in a new locale. She had to abruptly return to Barbados because the boys, who she had left in the man’s care until she could accumulate enough to send for them, was mistreating the children. Shortly after lockdown there was a domestic incident that resulted in the police being summoned. The police unit which responded was the one responsible for domestic and intimate partner violence on the Island. When the dust settled, the woman and her two children were put out of the house and had to fall on the mercy of the social welfare system because the mother was essentially left homeless in the melee.
The same evening that the victim left the residence with her two children, the perpetrator of violence against her sent her a text telling her she would have to crawl back to his house on her knees because she would never find a better place to be. He then followed her to the elderly relative’s house where she had sought refuge to ‘chat’ with the family member. In court the perpetrator clearly articulated that he would not allow the victim access to the property where her personal effects were. He was warned by the magistrate that he could not and should not do that. However, true to his promise, the perpetrator refused to allow the victim into the residence to pack her belongings. She filed a breach of protection order which the magistrate described as spurred by ‘foolishness’, trivialising her efforts to seek justice through the courts while granting the perpetrator access to his sons. He was not required to go to any counselling or parenting class. So the man who just a few weeks ago has evicted minor children in the middle of a lockdown, was granted access to the very children by the court.
I could go on and on with shocking anecdote after shocking anecdote, but it all boils down to the results that will continue to occur in Barbados if we do not address the lack of a comprehensive framework and sustained political will around domestic violence. One of our major barriers is a national culture that continues to uphold patriarchy and misogyny. COVID-19 has shone a bright light on the gaps we have known we have in Barbados. It has also revealed the wide gaps in what we perceive achievement of gender equality to be and the real possibility that on this trajectory we will not reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals by the target date of 2030. I no longer check the COVID numbers. COVID highlighted the crisis but in my neck of the woods, it really isn’t the crisis.
