Ending violence

AS a concerned citizen of Fiji, I wish to express my views and opinions in regards to efforts to end violence against women and children.

Recently, I have noticed that there are many women in our society who are victims of violence.

Violence against women. This has significant impact on development outcomes, affecting families and communities and placing significant strain on health care, social services and policing and justice systems.

For example, the children of women who experience violence have increased levels of child mortality, emotional and behavioural problems, and are more likely to become perpetrators of violence if they are boys, or victims, if they are girls.

Therefore, the importance of ending violence against women and children is that the women and children in our societies have a safer place to live in and there will be less intensity of such violence which has varied over time and even today varies between societies.

Such violence is often seen as a mechanism for the subjugation of women, whether in society in general or in an interpersonal relationship.

Such violence may arise from a sense of entitlement, superiority, misogyny or similar attitudes in the perpetrator, or because of his violent nature, especially against women.

Prevention of violence requires co-ordinated efforts at all levels aimed at raising awareness of related issues, changing community norms about violence and increasing women’s status in society.

Preventing and responding to violence against women is a key element of Pacific women.

The program works with a range of partners to facilitate prevention approaches that engage multiple stakeholder groups.

Local partners can most effectively provide analysis of the sociocultural factors that drive specific forms of violence in local contexts. This helps to identify risk factors and social norms that perpetuate violence, as well as structures that hold these norms in place and influence attitudes and behaviours. Global evidence is finding that working through multiple entry points to change social norms and challenge unequal gender power relations is effective in preventing violence against women. Laws and comprehensive measures such as counselling should be practised so that people change and the men in our societies start respecting women and on the same note they treat their wife, mothers and sisters nicely, by simply being nice to them.

Education is also an important intervention to reducing violence.

In Fiji for example, I believe it has been found that the more educated a woman, the more likely she is to agree with statements that support equal gender power relations and women’s human rights.

However, I believe there is an exception to this generalisation: tertiary educated women are less likely to agree that people outside the family should intervene if a man mistreats his wife, compared with secondary and primary school graduates.

Each and every individual of the nation should pull up their socks to act upon and contribute towards ending violence against women and children.

Henceforth, I would like to urge the relevant authorities and the public to take suitable and immediate actions in order minimise the effects of violence against women and children in Fiji.

JAYNESH KRSHIL KUMAR Wailevu, Abua, Labasa