Faine Richards

faine.richards@guardian.co.tt

A pe­ti­tion call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to amend the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act and set aside spe­cial fund­ing to keep shel­ters for abused women and chil­dren open has been signed by 1700 peo­ple.

Yes­ter­day it was de­liv­ered to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter at White­hall by three ac­tivists rep­re­sent­ing the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (CADV), the Shel­ter for Bat­tered Women and Chil­dren and the Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO): Sex and Gen­der Jus­tice. An al­liance of 20 NGOs draft­ed the pe­ti­tion and cir­cu­lat­ed it on­line.

Their call for the state to act comes af­ter six fe­males—Rachel Lo­gan, Gabriel­la Dubar­ry, Jezelle Philip-Fournil­li­er, Pol­ly Ann Chu­niesingh, Naiee Singh, Nicole Hack­shaw and 8-year-old Mukeisha May­nard—were killed in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents in the first two months of this year.

“We have to, have to, as a mat­ter of ur­gency, ad­dress this epi­dem­ic of vi­o­lence,” said CADV pres­i­dent Rober­ta Clarke just be­fore she de­liv­ered the pe­ti­tion.

Clarke said there is no doubt that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and oth­er of­fice­hold­ers are con­cerned about the alarm­ing rate of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence killings, but that con­cern needs to spur on tar­get­ed ac­tion.

“We un­der­stand there may be a draft, a Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Bill. If that’s the case, we are heart­ened by that, but we have to fast for­ward and fast track con­sid­er­a­tion of that draft and the en­act­ment of it to Par­lia­ment,” she said.

She said ad­vo­cates were not con­sult­ed on the draft amend­ments.

NGOs have been cry­ing out for amend­ments that would al­low ze­ro tol­er­ance of do­mes­tic abuse, strength­en pro­tec­tion for vic­tims and hold po­lice and the courts more ac­count­able for how they deal with abusers.

In No­vem­ber 2017, the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion pro­posed ten changes to the ex­ist­ing law that would, among oth­er things, re­move the abuser from the home, man­date po­lice to re­spond to all com­plaints and charge peo­ple for breach­ing pro­tec­tion or­ders.

Ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the man­age­ment com­mit­tee for the Shel­ter for Bat­tered Women and Chil­dren, Sher­ron Har­ford, said an­oth­er part of the prob­lem which the pe­ti­tion calls on the Prime Min­is­ter to ad­dress is the clo­sure of shel­ters.

“The shel­ters need funds. Two shel­ters are closed, one shel­ter is op­er­at­ing at 50 per cent,” Har­ford lament­ed.

Co-di­rec­tor at CAISO, An­gelique Nixon, said the state needs to give “bud­getary pri­or­i­ty” to the two shel­ters that are not func­tion­al so they can re-open im­me­di­ate­ly.

To avoid fu­ture re­cur­rences, the NGOs are lob­by­ing for the state to es­tab­lish a so­cial fund for shel­ters.

“We want the state to be held ac­count­able for the ser­vices and for the mon­ey that is set aside to pro­tect cit­i­zens, so one of the big mes­sages that we have for to­day and for this pe­ti­tion is that the state should have pri­ori­tised bud­getary pro­vi­sions for the new­ly-es­tab­lished Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice,” she said.

The pe­ti­tion al­so calls for pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and con­tent in the school cur­ricu­lum to help with skill-build­ing and cul­tur­al change.