Editorial

The shadow pandemic

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has described as “troubling” the persistence of gender-based violence against women and girls in the region and the high rates of feminicide.

In  a recently published document,  ECLA pointed out that the situation ” has been aggravated under confinement and the restrictions on movement ordered by countries in the face of COVID-19, which limited their access to support networks and assistance-related services.”

Of course,  gender violence is not just a Latin American or Caribbean problem. It’s world-wide and cuts across race and class.

Here in Canada in our own Caribbean community, reports are surfacing of the rise in domestic violence during the current lockdown as a result of the COVID19 pandemic.

But  with respect to Latin America and the Caribbean., as Alicia Bárcena, ECLA’s executive secretary, notes,“gender violence occurs systematically.”

She says “it knows no borders, affecting women and girls of all ages, and taking place in all types of spaces: in workplaces, in the context of political and community participation, on transportation and in the street, in schools and educational centres, in cyberspace and — without a doubt within homes.”

United Nations Secretary‑General António Guterres  describes the problem of gender violence as ” the shadow pandemic ” – an apt description for a problem which, though widespread,  is still under-reported.

We note with concern that the police in many parts of the Caribbean do not pay sufficient attention to domestic violence and in  some cases would take no action on reports of such violence.

And many victims have been forced to flee their counnties to escape their attackers who, in some cases,  have been their ” intimate partners.”

Some of these victims came to Canada seeking protection  as refugee claimants. Unfortunately,  sometimes their stories are not believed by the immigration authorities and they find themselves in “limbo land,”out of status, living in the shadows and fearing that one day they may be picked up and sent back from  whence they came to face more violence or death at the hands of their attackers.

The  Jamaica Observer newspaper recently published a news story about the treatment which a blind woman said she received when she went to a police station in Jamaica to make a report about domestic violence.

The paper reported that ” the incident “has left yet another blot on members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), who the blind woman said, made a mockery of her abuse when she went to report it.”

According  to the paper, the woman, who was part of a panel of representatives from vulnerable communities sharing their experiences about access to justice in Jamaica, said the police officers took her report ” as a joke.”

She went on to say that the matter got worse when it got to court and the judge ordered that her abuser be removed from her home.

“The police served him the summons, but didn’t remove him,” she said.

Many women in Toronto’s Caribbean community say that situation which the blind woman  encountered is not uncommon.

And  all too often they throw up their hands in despair and ask:  Can  anything be done about gender violence? 

ECLA has suggested that to overcome this problems, politicies are needed that address ” the structural constraints of inequality, mainly those stemming from discriminatory and violent patriarchal cultural patterns.”

“Progress must be urgently made, in a comprehensive and accelerated way, towards guaranteeing women’s rights and their autonomy in its economic and physical dimensions, and in terms of decision-making,” it  said.

We hope that the power that  be would take the ECLA message to heart.

In case the governments have forgotten, it is now  2020 and we should remind them that it is high time that they should work along witb the people to end the shadow pandemic of gender-based violence once and for all.