Finally, a plan for tackling GBV

PUBLICISATION of a National Strategic Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Sexual Violence of Trinidad and Tobago 2023-2027 (NSAP on GBV and SV) is a major achievement. It follows at least a decade of calls by feminists in civil society. The action plan’s key themes are: prevention, protection, prosecution, punishment/ penalties, and provision for redress. And it has five outcomes:

1. Increased citizen awareness and intolerance towards all forms of GBV and SV;
2. Effective, inclusive and gender-responsive services for victims and survivors;
3. Implementation of legislation and administration of justice;
4. Redress and reparations, and penalties and rehabilitation for perpetrators; and
5. Improved multi-stakeholder co-ordination.

The plan is a 2024 update on the 2016-2022 action plan which was never resourced by the Government, and eventually became obsolete.

Its major points are drawn from that document, including a focus on survivors’ economic empowerment, minimising the trauma of the prosecution process for victims, and improving state accountability.

There’s a much longer situational analysis in the 2016 plan which mapped the landscape of who was out there doing what. There’s also a more comprehensive legislative framework in the 2016 plan which doesn’t overtly appear in the more streamlined 2024 document.

The 2024 NSAP focuses on sensitisation and training, supporting a model private- sector GBV policy, providing counselling for perpetrators to reduce repeated violence, service-provider protocols and guidelines, improved policing, better disability access to courts, psychosocial support for victims, provision of adequate safe homes and shelters, updated legislation, more efficient case management and higher conviction rates, and a reparations fund for survivors and victims.

Its support for primary- and secondary- school health and family life education on GBV is critical. This will be a key cornerstone for advocacy. As a researcher in the field, I especially noted the emphasis on data collection so that state and civil-society action is evidence- based. There are nuggets for scholars who read gender mainstreaming texts with a close eye.

First, the definition of gender states (incorrectly) that it “refers to the two sexes, male and female,” though in the next lines it recognises (correctly) that gender refers to differences and inequalities associated with women and men.

This signposts a tension in state practice that dates back to Patrick Manning’s position in 2004 that there is no such thing as “gender flexibility,” and to drafts of the National Policy on Gender and Development (popularly referred to as “the Gender Policy”) which referred only to sex in its definition of gender. Also interesting, the definition comes from the 2010 version of the Gender Policy, not the 2018 Green Paper which was presented in Parliament, but was never approved by Cabinet as national policy.

Given its responsibility for gender mainstreaming, but the minefield that faces those advancing gender equity in a masculinist state, Gender and Child Affairs had been pressing forward parts of the 2018 draft (which is considered government policy for the public sector), taking the implementation route to achieve some of what a national policy envisions.

Fascinatingly, the 2024 NSAP lists the “National Policy on Gender and Development, 2018” as part of the existing policy framework, continuing to present it as approved national policy. All this speaks to the nuances, contradictions and tactics of gender politics in Caribbean societies. There’s one reference to a need for more research on LGBTQI communities in the 2016 plan that has been excised from the 2024 version, which instead uses the more politically-savvy language of inclusivity.

This is likely strategic. However, it risks both “invisibilising” GBV as experienced within this community as well as LGBTQI victims’ need for social-norm change, protective legislation, non-discriminatory services and access to justice. Gender-based and sexual violence cannot be ended without tackling homophobia, which is the henchman of gender inequality.

Still, under Objective 2, one indicator for whether improved healthcare services for survivors is achieved is “the number of shelters catering for GBV needs of transgender persons, persons with disabilities, men and boys, trafficked persons and the elderly.”

This minor inclusion is courageous stuff in our current climate. The 2024 NSAP incorporates significant work already done under the Spotlight Initiative and supported by UN organisations. While the 2016 NSAP included timelines and budgets, this one does not.

It’s not clear how much was already funded, how much is to be funded, for what and by whom. Still, anyone in the terrain of ending GBV knows it comprises thickets of political actors and sensitivities. A plan like this is one of the maps we most definitely need.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 528

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