Although TT and Ukraine are undergoing vastly different realities, gender-based violence (GBV) and domestic violence (DV) remain grave problems in both countries, with governments making responses to the scourge a top priority.
During a virtual workshop on Wednesday hosted by UN Women titled Shared Experiences and Best Practices in Preventing and Combating Gender-Based Violence, ministers and legislators shared the experiences in their respective countries and the measures being implemented to deal with GBV and DV.
Ukrainian Government Commissioner for Gender Equality Policy Kateryna Levchenko said the country had a population of 41 million, of which 54 per cent were women. She said since Russia began a large-scale invasion of the country in 2022, 8,534 civilians were killed, including approximately 500 children. She said there were five million internally displaced people in the country, with nine million migrating to other countries.
She said gender equality was a government priority and it had signed on to the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combatting Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, otherwise known as the Istanbul Convention, in 2022. She invited TT to sign on to the convention, which is open to non-European countries.
TT’s Gender and Child Affairs Minister Ayanna Webster-Roy said 49.8 per cent of TT’s 1.3 million people were women and girls. She said 44 per cent of women who were ever partnered had experienced intimate partner violence (IPV).
“During the covid19 pandemic, TT experienced a startling increase in reported incidents of domestic violence, to the extent it was called a shadow pandemic. Most of these cases were reported by women, although we have male victims and female abusers. In 2020, the Crime and Problem Analysis Unit of the police service said there were 2,484 reports of DV, 2270 in 2021, and 2,994 in 2022.
“GBV is about power and control. Some of the factors that contribute to it are the gendered norms, economic situations, factors in the home, substance abuse, economic hardship, and psychological factors with people who grew up in abusive situations, among many others.”
Both ministers said their countries had signed up to various international conventions, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Both ministers said it was essential to have multi-sectoral and whole-of-government approaches to combatting GBV and DV, including government ministries, state agencies, academia, CSOs, and the private sector.
Webster-Roy said key initiatives in the national response included the formation of a GBV unit in the police service, state-owned and NGO-operated DV shelters, rental assistance programmes and other grants, training programmes, a central registry on DV, the national DV hotline, counselling services, and activities under the Spotlight Initiative, among others.
Ministry of the Attorney General’s International Law and Human Rights Unit director Ian Rampersad said TT does not have a single Ac
