by Leela Ramdeen, Chair of the Catholic Commission for Social Justice
“Violence against women is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation, and it is perhaps the most pervasive. It knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth. As long as it continues we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality, development and peace” (Kofi Annan).
The mission of the Catholic Church in Trinidad and Tobago is to build a civilisation of love. Enshrined in T&T’s Constitution are certain fundamental human rights that were inserted there for a purpose; so that we would seek to live by the principles outlined therein. The challenge we face, as do many countries today, is translating such principles into practice.
The UN’s Children’s Rights Day on November 20, was followed on Friday 25, by the UN Day for the Elimination of Violence against women. CCSJ issued a media release listing some of the issues we must address in T&T if we are to build a “child-friendly” society. As Catholics, we cannot sit on the fence and fail to take sides. Our faith requires us to stand on the side of the oppressed. As Martin Luther King Jr said: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
In 1993 the UN General Assembly defined violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”
We are all diminished and dehumanised by such violence. UN research shows that one in every three women in our world—about one billion—“will be beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime—sometimes with fatal consequences, whether at the hands of family members, government security forces, or armed rebels.”
You would have read in last week’s Catholic News that in the Congo a woman is raped every minute. The Catholic News Service reported on an interview with Sr Marie-Bernard Alima, a member of the Sisters of St Joseph of Kalemie and General Secretary of the Catholic Church’s national Justice and Peace Commission in the Congo. She said that rape destroys not only women but also society.
I met Sr Marie-Bernard at the conference I attended in Rome in May to observe the 50th anniversary of Mater et Magistra. She shared with us the challenges she faces in seeking to stop the horror of rape in the Congo. In many countries rape is used as a tool of war. Even when the war ends, as is the case in the Congo, rape continues unabated. Members of UN Peacekeeping forces have also been known to rape women/girls.
I focus on the issue of rape, as over the past few months there has been an increase in media reports of rape in T&T. Since this is an underreported crime, these reports may only be the tip of the iceberg. I hope there will be a thorough investigation into allegations about the way in which a rape victim was treated when she was taken by a kindly couple to a police station.
Violence against women/girls plagues all strata of every society, all religious and ethnic groups. In 2004 Diana Mahabir-Wyatt, Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said that, “T&T is regarded as the domestic violence capital in the region.” We must take urgent action to transform society to reflect Gospel values. There are many strategies that we should adopt if we are to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls e.g.
• offer solidarity and support in parishes to the victims of violence (form victim support groups);
• play our part in building a culture of life, love and mutual respect: from an early age;
• address issues relating to the socialisation of boys and girls, unequal power relations between men and women, the need that some men have to control women and the frustrations that both men and women experience because of poverty and social exclusion;
• address the need for values/conscience formation and citizenship programmes – at home, in our educational institutions, in our parishes, in our workplaces etc. (see Archbishop Gilbert’s column re conscience formation in last week’s Catholic News) ;
• offer training sessions for men and women with the aim of promoting attitudinal and behavioural changes;
• review related legislation and procedures and practices used by institutions such as the Police Service for dealing with violence against women;
• mobilise the media in efforts to eliminate such violence.
Let us redouble our efforts to promote the dignity of each woman/girl and to protect their lives.
