Today, Guyana will be joining the rest of the world to observe International Day for the Prevention of Violence against Women and Girls, which is being celebrated under the theme, “Leave no one behind: end violence against women and girls.”
UN Secretary General António Guterres in his message on this day stressed that every woman and every girl have the right to a life free of violence.
Around the world, more than 1 in 3 women face violence throughout their lifetime; 750 million women were married before age 18, and more than 250 million have undergone female genital mutilation.
Women’s rights activists are being targeted at alarming levels. There is increasing recognition that violence against women is a major barrier to the fulfilment of human rights, and a direct challenge to women’s inclusion and participation in sustainable development and sustaining peace.
According to UN Women, when world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, they recognised that ending violence against women and girls was a prerequisite for the achievement of the development agenda. Goal 5 on gender equality includes a specific target to end all forms of violence against women, including trafficking, other forms of sexual violence, and harmful practices.
Despite this, the body pointed out, the resources dedicated to addressing the issue still do not match the scale of the challenge. It also emphasised that allocating adequate resources to prevent and address violence against women is not only a legal obligation and a moral imperative, but a sound investment, too.
In Guyana, when one reads the media reports, our women are shot, hacked, stabbed, burnt, strangled, drowned, mercilessly beaten, and chopped. Guyana’s women are being brutalised and murdered, and there is little more than a ripple from the political establishment or the movers and shakers of society. Women are victims of “crimes of passion”, home invasions, sexual assaults, alcoholic rages, misplaced macho mind-sets and isolation/neglect by families and society.
Guyana’s second periodic report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) states that “violence against women is widespread in Guyana”.
Tackling gender-based violence must remain an ongoing endeavour that must gradually incorporate all stakeholders.
While not limited to Guyana, violence has been declared a global pandemic and human rights violation against women. In the male-dominated world-view, the role of women in the family, home, relationship and society has been taken for granted, and this taken-for-granted-ness has led to the perpetuation of violence in several forms. Such acts of discrimination impact the socioeconomic well-being of women and girls, impeding progress in areas such as poverty eradication, HIV/AIDS, peace and security.
UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has highlighted effective interventions and reiterated that the pandemic of violence against women and girls can end, but it would need commitment and investment nationally and internationally. Violence against women and girls, a gross human rights violation, devastates lives, causes untold pain, suffering and illness. It also incurs high economic costs. A recent study estimated that the cost of intimate-partner violence accounted for 5.2 per cent of the global economy.
Beyond the direct medical and judicial costs, violence against women takes a toll on household and national budgets through lost income and productivity. In Vietnam, for example, expenditure and lost earnings resulting from domestic violence was estimated at 1.4 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2010. In the United Kingdom, the cost of domestic violence in 2009, including service-related costs, lost economic output and human and emotional costs, amounted to 16 billion pounds sterling.
In Guyana, the Women and Gender Equality Commission, which joined with many other organisations to speak out on the occasion, also acknowledged that one of the major challenges to efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls worldwide is financing. As a result, they pointed to the glaring reality that resources for initiatives to prevent and end violence against women and girls are severely lacking.
In their bid to reinforce the point that there is much more work to be done in Guyana to ensure that the Prevention of Discrimination Act and the constitutional provisions on non-discrimination and equality are enforced, they pointed to the overall economic impact of tackling the existing issues, which can actually contribute to the prevention of violence against women and girls.
On this International Day for the Prevention of Violence against Women and Girls, let us as a nation move forward with a collective action to end violence against women and girls.
