KEVON FELMINE

Women’s rights ad­vo­cate and gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh is wel­com­ing the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on do­mes­tic vi­o­lence be­ing host­ed by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs (AGLA) to­day.

The con­sul­ta­tion will take place at the Port-of-Spain Ball­room of Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel and is part of the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er ef­fort to pri­ori­tise the pro­tec­tion of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims.

Ac­cord­ing to the AGLA web­site, the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Unit will lead the dis­cus­sion, fo­cus­ing on the gaps in the jus­tice sys­tem’s abil­i­ty to meet the needs of vic­tims. Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, the state­ment not­ed, re­mains a scourge in so­ci­ety, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly im­pact­ing women and girls.

Da­ta from 2018 shows that 30 per cent of women in in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ships have ex­pe­ri­enced phys­i­cal or sex­u­al abuse from their part­ners. In March 2023, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­vealed that po­lice re­ceived 6,250 do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports be­tween March 2020 and March 2022, with most in­ci­dents in­volv­ing in­ti­mate part­ners.

When asked about the im­por­tance of the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion, Mowlah-Baksh high­light­ed that nu­mer­ous pa­pers and re­ports on do­mes­tic and gen­der-based vi­o­lence have been sub­mit­ted to the State and oth­er agen­cies over the years. While there is a wealth of doc­u­men­ta­tion out­lin­ing what needs to be done, she stressed that the re­al chal­lenge lies in ap­ply­ing the nec­es­sary hu­man and fi­nan­cial re­sources to im­ple­ment those rec­om­men­da­tions. She added that prop­er train­ing for pro­tec­tive and so­cial ser­vice agen­cies is al­so es­sen­tial.

“These are the three key ar­eas—pro­tect­ing sur­vivors, bring­ing jus­tice to sur­vivors, and hold­ing per­pe­tra­tors ac­count­able,” Mowlah-Baksh said. “We al­so need ro­bust so­cial ser­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly those tasked with re­spond­ing to sur­vivors of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.”

Mowlah-Baksh stressed the need for pre­ven­tion, stat­ing that sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts must be made to ed­u­cate peo­ple about the harm­ful and un­ac­cept­able na­ture of such be­hav­iour to tru­ly ad­dress do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in T&T.