CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

The Gov­ern­ment is now plan­ning to es­tab­lish a shel­ter for men who are vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

This rev­e­la­tion came one day af­ter LGBTQI+ ad­vo­ca­cy group, CAISO Sex and Jus­tice Pro­gramme, called for the gov­ern­ment's as­sis­tance in pro­vid­ing safe hous­es for its mem­bers.

Re­spond­ing to the call, Min­is­ter of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy MP, told Guardian Me­dia:

"While we have not yet com­mis­sioned our do­mes­tic vi­o­lence shel­ter for male vic­tims, we are work­ing dili­gent­ly to­wards its es­tab­lish­ment and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion."

How­ev­er, a time­frame for this was not giv­en.

In terms of oth­er vic­tims, she main­tained that all so­cial ser­vices, in­clud­ing safe homes, are avail­able to all cit­i­zens.

At a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence on Tues­day, CAISO de­liv­ered its key find­ings com­ing out of a pi­lot pro­gramme called the 'Whole­ness and Jus­tice Pro­gramme', from De­cem­ber 2020 to De­cem­ber 2021.

The group said it was recog­nised that there was a lot of hous­ing in­sta­bil­i­ty and a grow­ing need for safe hous­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young LGBTQI+ peo­ple.

Re­search and pro­gramme as­so­ciate, Kel­log Nke­mako­lam, ex­plained that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and as­so­ci­at­ed re­stric­tions would have im­pact­ed the need for safe hous­es.

On Tues­day, the world recog­nised the In­ter­na­tion­al Day Against Ho­mo­pho­bia, Bi­pho­bia, In­ter­sex­ism and Trans­pho­bia (IDI­A­HO­BIT).