Santo Domingo, 25th of November 2020 – Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and what better way to honor this cause than by announcing the launch of a new Project that aims to address gender-based violence in the Caribbean.
Violence against women is a serious public health and human rights threat that affects a significant percentage of women and girls in the Caribbean. It has many underrecognized health consequences, including death, and poses significant costs for the economies of developing countries.
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 biggest gender inequality in the region. Kay Fanm, a Haitian women’s rights organization, has estimated that 72% of Haitian girls have been raped, and in the Dominican Republic, there’s an average of 177 feminicides per year since 2005.
Furthermore, with the COVID-19 Pandemic, a dramatic surge in cases of violence against girls and women during lockdown in the Caribbean is threatening to turn into a catastrophe as survivors of abuse have no one to turn to and nowhere to go.
“Caribbean United Against GBV” is anew project undertaken by the Centro de Orientación e Investigación Integral (COIN) with support from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. The overall goal of the project is to address the root causes of GBV in the Caribbean in order to contribute to the end of violence against women and promote equitable environments.
COIN’s Executive Director 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 exist 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 in 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.”
To address these important issues, the project will tackle the root causes of gender-based violence and 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, trainings for men and boys that address socio-cultural attitudes that lead to GBV and social-emotional learning programs.
· Build institutional capacity and alliances: trainings with civil society organizations as well as with government entities, establishment of multi-stakeholder discussion spaces and participation in networks.
· Empower youth: empowerment and leadership trainings and direct involvement in local project activities as advocates against GBV.
· Improve availability and access to services: mapping of existing services, signature of MOUs among project sub-recipients and service providers, 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, reduce socio-cultural attitudes that lead to GBV, 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 Trinidad and Tobago.
Interested in being part of this initiative?
Civil Society Organizations that are interested in submitting a proposal for a small grant can request the application package by sending an email to amartin.coin@gmail.com and mjaar.coin@gmail.com.
[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.
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