Lack of will?
UWI lecturer believes the Government isn’t doing enough to tackle intimate partner violence
IT HAS been classified as a public health epidemic, but there are concerns that the Government is doing very little to address intimate partner violence and has, in fact, left it up to volunteers to intervene and tackle the issue.
Political commentator and University of the West Indies lecturer Nadeen Spence is among those who share this view, and she believes that the time has come for those in authority to get more involved in addressing the problem.
“There is a lack of, I think, will on the part of our Government to interfere in a matter that I think is of critical societal importance,” Spence told a group of editors and reporters on Thursday during a Gleaner Editors’ forum.
The drafting of a national strategic action plan to eliminate gender-based violence is a good start, but Spence, who served as part of the committee when the plan was being conceptualised about 10 years ago, is disappointed at the rate of implementation.
Spence was also a critical part of the Bureau of Gender Affairs, the government agency tasked with representing the interests of men and women through the promotion of gender equity and equality.
“If you look at the Bureau, for example, it hasn’t had a substantial presence in our society, and this is where a lot of the advocacy, and so on, around these issues usually takes place,” she lamented.
“Much of what we are talking about now, in terms of helping women, and so on, to deal with violence come through the NGO (non-governmental organisation) sector comes through volunteers. It comes through other women who are volunteering time, along with their daily work to raise awareness or to talk about these issues,” she said.