Dear Editor,
We are killing our women. Guyanese men are killing the women they once loved. A couple of numbers are frightening, the rates of femicide in this thinly populated country at unacceptable proportions. It is both a public and secret shame, a national scourge, and an individual and communal embarrassment. On each occasion that a woman is killed, or mauled, or crippled, or scarred in this country, all of us men are also killed (self-respect); mauled (dignity), crippled (conscience); and scarred (humiliated). In a reversal of that old saying, Peter pays for Paul, and all pays for Paul. There is that stigma that shroud all of us men, not just perpetrators, as though we are one, too. We are up there in Guyana where femicides are involved.
Guyana came out second in the Caribbean, behind Belize, with a femicide rate of 2.0 per 100,000 women in the population (ECLAC study -KN November 27). This statistic, 2.0 per 100,000 women may sound negligible, but not for the dead women, or their surviving family members left traumatized for life. Take it from me on this one. A few years ago, I was invited to share with some survivors, and what was encountered is still deeply etched in the consciousness, as if I am still there with them. There were these pained, numb, scared, troubled children, sisters, mothers, and a few male relatives walking around, more like floating around, in a kind of trance. For them, femicide is not a statistic; it is of them, which makes it all too real in its grievous horrors that never end.
There is lifetime left searching for closure, which for some may never completely be found. Here is another embarrassing number. In a report titled “Femicide Rates by Country 2022” Guyana is ranked 10 in the world, with 5.9 women per 100,000 females in in the population killed. The source of that statistic is the World Bank (“Intentional homicides, female (per 100,000 females”). If anything, compared to the ECLAC study for 2021, the femicide rate in Guyana is sharply up. I am aware that the Ministry of Human Services and Social Protection has introduced a number of measures intended to curb and help women in Guyana. They are all commendable, but I am prompted to question the reach and effectiveness of what is being done, and if we cannot do more. Is it possible that the arc of what the ministry is doing is too narrow, too reactive, and needs some degree of rethinking?
I assure that there is no interest in criticizing efforts underway; only supporting what is in place, and probing further to determine if a strategy can be developed to target would be abusers, batterers, and murderers. In other words, while our women are being assisted on one prong of approach, another sets the groundwork that alerts men that they will be dealt with most harshly. Their entire life could come to a standstill. It could be a deterrent. It may help our young girls and women, the most vulnerable grouping, to move away from the local culture and tradition that urge suffering in silence. Now, as we gear up for the celebration of the extended holiday season in December, I shrink in anxiousness and some fear.
The holiday season usually means more imbibing than the months and seasons prior. More imbibing means less self-control. More loss of self-control could mean more women dead. Or wounded. Or traumatized. Some for the umpteenth time. On paper, we are top of the world in many things. In terms of femicides and our place in the world’s Top 10, that is not just on paper. It is in the blood of our dead women. This has to come to a stop sometime. I say it is now, especially when the eyes of the world are on Guyana, and countless feet from all over are beating a path to here.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
