The week lead­ing up to to­day’s ob­ser­vance of the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for the Elim­i­na­tion of Vi­o­lence Against Women start­ed with a mur­der-sui­cide — an in­ci­dent trig­gered by do­mes­tic vi­o­lence that re­sult­ed in the death of an in­no­cent by­stander be­fore the per­pe­tra­tor took his own life.

The se­quence of events that oc­curred at the Cross Cross­ing Shop­ping Cen­tre when Sharaz Ageemoolar shot his es­tranged wife Anis­sa Ra­j­gob­in-Ageemoolar, then killed Rosario Ramd­han, marked the dead­ly end to an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship.

Sad­ly, such in­ci­dents are all too com­mon in this coun­try, with the trag­ic out­comes of­ten played out in pub­lic.

The tim­ing on this oc­ca­sion, as T&T joins in glob­al re­flec­tions on the scourge of gen­der-based vi­o­lence, places the is­sue cen­ter stage, draw­ing na­tion­al at­ten­tion to an is­sue that is sur­passed on­ly by gang vi­o­lence as a lead­ing con­trib­u­tor to the coun­try’s high mur­der rate.

This lat­est in­ci­dent has prompt­ed the usu­al pub­lic out­cries and emo­tion­al de­bates, in­clud­ing calls for ac­tion and search­es for so­lu­tions to a so­cial af­flic­tion that not on­ly claims lives but tears fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties apart.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as is too of­ten the case in this coun­try, plen­ty of talk of­ten doesn’t trans­late in­to ef­fec­tive ac­tion.

The pub­lic clam­our dies down quick­ly and con­cern about the prob­lem rapid­ly fades, leav­ing hun­dreds of women and girls across the coun­try at the mer­cy of the per­pe­tra­tors who vi­o­lent­ly abuse and ex­ploit them.

The De­c­la­ra­tion on the Elim­i­na­tion of Vi­o­lence Against Women is­sued by the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly de­fines vi­o­lence against women as “any act of gen­der-based vi­o­lence that re­sults in, or is like­ly to re­sult in, phys­i­cal, sex­u­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal harm or suf­fer­ing to women, in­clud­ing threats of such acts, co­er­cion or ar­bi­trary de­pri­va­tion of lib­er­ty, whether oc­cur­ring in pub­lic or in pri­vate life”.

The prob­lem of gen­der-based vi­o­lence in T&T has kept pace with the glob­al rate of one in three women who have ex­pe­ri­enced phys­i­cal and/or sex­u­al vi­o­lence by an in­ti­mate part­ner.

The sit­u­a­tion got much worse dur­ing the lock­downs and re­stric­tions of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, with a 140 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of cas­es of abuse of women and girls re­port­ed to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in 2020.

Many of the mi­grant women and girls, main­ly from neigh­bour­ing Venezuela, who have sought a safe haven in this coun­try, have in­stead added to the large num­bers of vic­tims.

That is why the call for ac­tion to elim­i­nate gen­der-based vi­o­lence across this coun­try and bring per­pe­tra­tors of this crime to jus­tice takes on a greater ur­gency this year.

In ad­di­tion to the cam­paigns con­sis­tent­ly waged by civ­il so­ci­ety, there needs to be greater in­volve­ment by the Gov­ern­ment, cor­po­rate sec­tor and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions.

It is not enough to ex­press out­rage and con­cern be­cause too many lives are be­ing lost.

There is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be a part of the so­lu­tion by join­ing the glob­al UNiTE cam­paign — 16 days of ac­tivism cul­mi­nat­ing on the In­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Rights Day on De­cem­ber 10.

This year’s cam­paign, In­vest to Pre­vent Vi­o­lence against Women and Girls, chal­lenges cit­i­zens to show how much they care about end­ing vi­o­lence against women and girls and gov­ern­ments to in­vest in gen­der-based vi­o­lence pre­ven­tion.

At this very minute, some­where in this coun­try, a woman or girl is be­ing sex­u­al­ly or phys­i­cal­ly abused. It will take com­mit­ted ac­tion by many to erad­i­cate this scourge from our na­tion.