Four out of every ten women in Jamaica say they’ve experienced some form of intimate partner violence at some point in their life. That’s according to a 2016 Women’s Health Survey conducted in Jamaica and republished in a World Bank 2023 report examining gender-based violence on the island. That is why the human rights sensitisation sessions being implemented by the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities (CVC) is focusing on gender-based violence (GBV) and how it impacts members of vulnerable communities to include women and girls and persons living with HIV. The latest session took place in the western Jamaica parish of Hanover.
Duty bearers such as Justices of the Peace and social workers participated in the workshop. The session, which was well received, focused on building the capacity of stakeholders within the justice system on human rights issues, to help them deliver services, effectively respond to complaints, and provide redress to key populations. The session also explored how justice stakeholders can be supported to develop initiatives and training that effectively mitigate and prevent gender-related stigma and discrimination to reduce human rights-related barriers experienced by members of key population groups.
Custos Rotulorum for the parish of Hanover, Dr. David Stair, welcomed CVC’s intervention in the parish, noting that the session will undoubtedly benefit the people of western Jamaica. “Domestic violence is a big thing and it’s not unique to our parish. It is something that I think is common right across our island and in our society because of how a lot of us have been socialized. That’s why I think that the content shared today is something that will help most of us in our interaction with the public and dealing with this issue. I’m sure some of the topics explored today and how it was explained to us, will help bring clarity to some of the things we do experience on a daily basis but don’t really recognise that it is what we are up against. I think the training should be repeated on a more regular basis to help keep us on our toes as it will benefit us and our clientele. I really don’t see anything but positives from a training like this,” Dr. Stair argued.
Meanwhile Justice of the Peace Sharmaine Suckoo said the training helped her to unearth and deal with her own personal biases. “I think the training is indeed relevant because as Justices of the Peace we have to deal with everybody in the society and sometimes we have our own preconceived ideas of who people are. I am a human being and I have some of those preconceived ideas, so the training helped me to break down how I see people. So today we learnt about stigma and discrimination and that opened my eyes. So now I’m able to train my mind and say alright Sharmaine, if you see a person in this situation, try not to think about how they look and to discriminate against them or to stigmatize them, but try to see the situation for what it is. And it is good to train our minds because nothing is wrong with retraining our minds and getting rid of the old ideas and seeing things from a fresh perspective. Doing this will help me to be fair in how I see and treat people,” she explained.
The Justice of the Peace added that the session will also provide her with the requisite knowledge to share with others. “When I’m having conversations with anybody at all, my church people, my coworkers, the persons I talk to on a day to day basis I will be able to break down some of this information to them and say look some of what you’re doing is discrimination or it is stigmatizing people. So just in my everyday life I will just try and talk to people about some of what I learnt today,” she said.
In the meantime, social worker at the Family Court Karen Campbell-Ellis says her major takeaway from the session is learning about the various types of gender-based violence abuses. “I did not think of isolation as a form of abuse. And I did not think of financial abuse in the way in which the trainer explained it, and economic abuse as types of abuse. Normally when you think of abuse you think of emotional, psychological, physical and verbal, but there are other things that were mentioned and that was really a wide awakening because some of us are sitting down and being abused and are not even aware of it. That was my major takeaway,” she pointed out. She added that the information shared will benefit her both in her personal and professional lives. “Not only will I be practicing what I have learnt when it comes on to my clients but I will also be exercising it when it comes on to my daily life and I will also be able to pass on the information to my colleagues. Just as I have learnt this today they will also be happy to learn about it,” she said.
The sensitisation session held in Hanover is one of the activities in a series of sessions with duty bearers involved in the delivery of services, including health and justice services, to key and vulnerable populations in Belize, Jamaica, Guyana, Suriname.
