The COVID-19 Pandemic has resulted in a surge in cases of violence against girls and women in the Region. In response, the Centro de Orientación e Investigación Integral (COIN) with support from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs has launched “Caribbean United against Gender-based Violence – GBV”.
The goal of the project is to address the root causes of GBV in the Caribbean and to contribute to the end of violence against women and promote equitable environments.
Santo Rosario, Executive Director, COIN expressed that “One of the biggest problems in the international framework has its roots in the cultural and educational processes of our societies, which place women in a situation of vulnerability compared to men. Gender inequality is a structural problem that requires that all the structures of the state and civil society recognize the implicit bias as well as the explicit discrimination that exists and promote laws and mechanisms that transform the way women are seen and treated. We must do segmented politics, as GBV is reflected in each one of the segments: at work, in politics, and relationships, as women are vulnerable in all these spheres. Policies, mechanisms and sanctions must be developed that accompany a new educational perspective that places women in a position of equality.”
The project will support the creation of an enabling environment through a series of community-level small grants that will include four types of interventions:
- Change social norms: baseline surveys, training for men and boys that address socio-cultural attitudes that lead to GBV and social-emotional learning programmes.
- Build institutional capacity and alliances: training with civil society organizations as well as with government entities, the establishment of multi-stakeholder discussion spaces and participation in networks.
- Empower youth: empowerment and leadership training and direct involvement in local project activities as advocates against GBV.
- Improve availability and access to services: mapping of existing services, securing MOUs among project sub-recipients and service providers, the establishment of a referral system and multi-stakeholder case management system.
In particular, these interventions aim to strengthen the capacity of local actors to provide GBV prevention and response services to survivors of abuse, improve available data on the services that are already put in place and reduce socio-cultural attitudes that lead to GBV. The project also aims to strengthen civil society and local governments’ abilities to improve access to GBV services and address GBV issues that result from the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The project will be implemented through small grants to local organizations in twelve Caribbean countries, namely: Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominican Republic, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Editor’s notes:
In the Caribbean, available data shows a troubling panorama: three of the top ten recorded rape rates in the world occur in the Caribbean[1] , and in nine Caribbean countries, 48% of adolescent girls’ sexual initiation was forced or “somewhat forced”[2]. Some examples include the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which, according to the UNDP, are among the four countries with the most significant gender inequality in the Region. Kay Fanm, a Haitian women’s rights organization, has estimated that 72% of Haitian girls have been raped. In the Dominican Republic, there is an average of 177 femicides (killing of a woman or girl, in particular by a man and on account of her gender) per year since 2005.
[1] 2007 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the LAC region
[2] According to a survey that was pointed to in the 2007 report aforementioned.