Gender based violence: it covers a wide spectrum of issues centering on abuse especially against women and girls but also men and boys. It is a chronic social problem that certainly won't go away overnight. So the National Women's Commission along with its partners keep revising and updating their national plan of action in seriously addressing this problem. The revised action plan for 2017 to 2020 was launched yesterday at the Biltmore and one of the lead figures in this initiative Anne-Marie Williams told us this plan focuses on a more multi-sectoral approach.
Anne-Marie Williams - Coordinator
"This plan is really a building up and a strengthening of the plan before which was the 2010-2013 plan. This plan is for 2017-2020 and its technically a 3 year framework that will chart the road to how we would effectively deal with decreasing the incidence of gender base violence and providing better support to victims and survivors, because over the past years a lot of work has been done in gender base violence but sometimes it's been done in silence and in knowing that we have to apply the multisectural approach makes us realize that we need to bring together the ministry of education, the ministry of human development, the police particularly the domestic violence unit, civil society organization, young person and at the same time, co-opt people as the need may arise. So, fighting gender base violence is not the job of one person or one organization but the mulitsectural approach has been the best practice across the world to make sure that gender base violence is reduced."
Another issue directly linked to gender based violence is "femicide" -which is a sex-based hate crime. Williams gave us some troubling figures and explained how this plan addresses it.
Anne-Marie Williams - Coordinator
"Over the past 8 years that there's been almost 100 cases of femicide and femicide is highest in Corozal, in Belize and in Stann Creek and so femicide is the killing of females by males because they are females. So it is almost like an intentional practice sometimes driven by misogyny or just driven by the fact that there is power relations and unequal power relations at that, it's not design to tell a woman or a man to pack of and leave your partner because they are beating you. Its design to give them the information and providing the services for them whenever something happens. It just like police, if you call for a police man, if you are involved in a domestic dispute, if you call a 100 times they should come a 100 times without even complaining and we know that because some officers feel it's okay they say it's you again, call me when you take back the man and all those kinds of things. Those things must not be said. They should do their work as professionals."
The plan of action spans 3 years.
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