A senior United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) official yesterday said that there’s a growing problem of gender-based violence in Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
UNFPA Caribbean director Alison Drayton, who is attending the Nairobi Summit on the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD25), said that there’s need for different strategies to counter this practice in the Caribbean region.
Drayton said gender-based violence has harmful and lasting consequences for victims, families, communities and nations, adding “the realisation of this increase is starting to change perceptions of the need to look at the region in a different way”.
The UNFPA Caribbean director, who was speaking on the sidelines of the summit, said “it’s an uphill battle”.
She added: “In many donor cooperation organisations, the Caribbean sits as a sub-region of Latin America. In the UNFPA the Caribbean is larger numerically than Latin America, making up 22 of the 40 countries in the grouping.”
Gender-based violence is one of five themes of the Nairobi Summit, which has been convened to mobilise the political will and financial commitments urgently needed to finally and fully implement the ICPD Programme of Action.
These commitments centre on achieving zero unmet need for family planning information and services, zero preventable maternal deaths, and zero sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices against women and girls.
