Coil: Orange cloth on trees to stop gender based violence?

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

“Praise God, I have never been abused” the woman said. She was doing her business not far from the trees with orange cloth. She had to dodge between cars at the traffic lights to sell water. She did not know what the orange stood for and was focussed on earning her living.

The trees look beautiful with the orange cloth around them and the message Stop Gender Based Violence and the Helpline 231-6556.

I call the helpline on Saturday morning at 9am and get the answering machine for the Ministry of Social Protection with a range of options none of which receive an answer.

Perhaps the help is only available during normal working hours for the Ministry.

The Childcare and Protection Agency already has a 24 hotline (227-0979) . The Ministry must be familiar with the protocols associated with running a helpline or hotline which is not about calling the Ministry switchboard.

There is something oppressive about the orange all over. Back in the day, the colour for the 25 November used to be Purple but purple it seems is now only used for Domestic Violence.

The trend of causes and colours could make any concerned citizen rainbow themselves – the rainbow though is already a symbol of LGBT equality.

The orange cloth on Camp Street is over Pink Cloth for Breast Cancer awareness. Breast Cancer affects women more than men and in Guyana.

The 25 November – International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is used to start off 16 days of activism against Gender Based Violence which concludes on Human Rights Day on 10 December.

And then we get on with Christmas and back to the normal stuff and use fairy lights and green and red and Christmas colours.

Violence against Women/Gender based violence

According to the UN resolution to intensify efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women

“violence against women” means 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;

“Gender based violence “ refers to violence which is done to reinforce the unequal power relations between dominant violent masculinity and femininity which is seen as weak and submissive or any kind of gender identity which rejects the idea that having a penis is enough to determine superiority.

Women and girls experience the violence in larger numbers.

The violence refers to different kinds of direct violence – beating , stabbing, feeling up, groping, harassment in the work place and home, rape, psychological, trafficking, threats, coercion, harassment on the road, isolation, forced marriages, forced pregnancies, forced abortions, forced genital mutilation, poor health care services.

Galtung’s Violence Triangle speaks to Structural and Cultural forms of violence. Cultural violence which nurtures the ‘kick in she back door’ lyrics and the belief that girls and women are exercising feminist agency in playing, dancing and simulating the sexual assault , the myth that fat and body shaming beauty pageants and other exploitative media are tasteful and liberating for people who cannot make the cut, and the high tolerance now for Donald Trump and slap-and-trip-bheri andl other politicians and leaders from religious and other spheres who have contempt for women and femininity.

The violence in saying that Minister Volda Lawrence and the PNC does not have to deal with allegations of rape made against her colleague and that her colleagues in the PPP do not have to do the same.

Structural Violence is in the weak legislation or implementation of laws, in the feminisation of poverty in the perpetuation of religious beliefs which nurture the violence and which trap survivors in abusive relationships. In Guyana, two stories exist of the comedy provided in the court rooms around matters related to domestic violence – one in Georgetown in which the lawyer attempted to have the case in camera, and one in Berbice. There are no reports as yet as to how the Government intends to respond to the Magistrates’ inability to ensure confidentiality for the persons involved in the matters or whether there will be orange cloth and balloons flooding the court rooms.

Structural Violence in the breast cancer survivors being treated medically without any pscyho-social support and with varied expectations of quality of care.

Budget 2017 in Guyana will be during the 16 days of Activism.

How orange will the budget be? Will the women who are surviving on minimum wage be offered any improvement in their living conditions? Will there be payment for counsellors and advocates in every single village in Guyana to work with survivors of gender based violence?

Do women and children have a way to move beyond security work and vulnerability to bandits with guns, and vulnerability to timing sales to the count down on traffic lights?

It is going to take more than tying orange cloth around trees with phone numbers which might or might not work depending on the day and time to ‘Stop Gender Based Violence”.

December 2016 will be 20 years since Guyana’s Domestic Violence Act was passed. Guyana was a leader in the Caribbean in recognising that Domestic violence and intimate partner violence are the most pervasive form of violence against women.

Many NGOs – Red Thread, Help & Shelter, GRPA, Roadside Baptist, faith based organisations and others have done what they could to provide education and services over the years.

They battle with funding – cynics might ask whether the money to orange the place for a day could have been used to pay counsellors and others.

Section 44 of the Domestic Violence Act gives the list of actions which the State should be involved. In case anyone wonders why we seem not to have moved forward on reducing this form of gender based violence.

Section 44 says that (1) The Director of Human Services in the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security shall be responsible for—

(a) promoting and developing educational programmes for the prevention of domestic violence;

(b) studying, investigating and publishing reports on the domestic violence problem in Guyana, its

manifestations and scope; the consequences and the options for confronting and eradicating it in

conjunction with the Police Force and other agencies and organisations;

(c) identifying groups and sectors in society in which domestic abuse is manifested and educating these groups and sectors making them aware of the skills required to combat domestic violence;

(d) creating an awareness among society with regard to the needs of victims of domestic violence and

their families;

(e) developing strategies to encourage changes in the policies and procedures in government agencies in order to improve their response to the needs of the victims of domestic violence;

(f) establishing and encouraging the establishment of programmes on information, support and counselling services for victims of domestic violence;

(g) encouraging programmes of services for boys and girls who come from homes where there is abuse and violence;

(h) providing training and orientation services for police officers and persons who assist

in the treatment and counselling of victims of domestic violence and abuse; and

(i) analysing and carrying out studies on the need for education and retraining for persons who engage in conduct that constitutes domestic violence and abuse and for their rehabilitation.

(2) In carrying out his responsibilities the Director of Human Services may collaborate with such governmental, non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations as he thinks fit.

Once again, as with previous years, there are no reports from the Ministry on the data, on the training and accountability mechanisms. There is no information as to what the public can expect from the police, the social workers and from calling the number on the orange cloth around the trees.

CADVA’s activism on justice for Babita Sarjou shows the failure of the police to deal with the violence. There are other men who have killed their wives, or pushed their female partners to death who are walking free because of lack of evidence and investigation.

Years ago, the Guyana Police Force had adopted extensive training modules as part of the efforts to transform their dealing with domestic violence.

I learned to my horror a few weeks ago, that the haste to get police out on the roads meant that the training period had reduced and that the intensive training modules are no longer part of the course.

Dr Janice Jackson in her paper “Policing Domestic Violence Context, Status and Prospects “ presented to the 24th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police in March 2009. That paper identifies the approaches which the police need to take to deal with domestic violence and by extension other forms of gender based violence.

The Guyana Police Force has not bothered to orange itself and the Ministers since 2009 have not bothered to do anything about improving the police response and accountability for dealing with domestic violence.

People call the police to Stop Gender Based Violence and get responses which indicate that the police will only budge if murder is involved. Other people have found that the thin walled rooms in some stations do not offer the privacy needed for reporting.

Guyana has had reports and a policy on what needs to be done, but the successive administrations have failed to implement any of the actions. It is much easier to come up with the list of things which need to be done, and do this over and over again. The trauma of dealing with change is not as easy as putting orange cloth around a tree.

The work to counter the culture to assert male dominance is intensive and requires skilled facilitation which is not about lecturing from behind a pulpit.

Dr Gabrielle Hosein blogs about a recent activity in Trinidad & Tobago with young men.

She writes that “Last Friday [18 November], the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, St. Augustine Campus, collaborated with the young men of the dorm, Canada Hall, to give young men a non-judgmental space to imagine a world without sexual violence against women. ‘Red Card Rape Culture’ wasn’t just a workshop with male students from ten Caribbean countries, or a hashtag that could go viral, it was a metaphor for men’s power to refuse the impunity of such violence. For, the field could never be level with such pervasive foul play, and their best selves would never let things run that way.”

Some of the work required to be done to deal with sexual offences is mandated in the Sexual Offences Act.

President Granger, President Ramotar and President Jagdeo all have in common their inability to convene the National Task Force for the Prevention of Sexual Offences as required in Section 87 of the Sexual Offences Act. (quoted here)

(1) There shall be established an inter-agency task force to be known as the National Task Force for the Prevention of Sexual Violence which shall have the duty to develop and implement a national plan for the prevention of sexual violence.

(2) The President shall appoint the members of the Task Force, which shall include the Ministers of Legal Affairs, Home Affairs, Human Services and Social Security, Amerindian Affairs, Education, Health, Local Government, Youth, Sport and Culture, senior public officers with responsibility for law enforcement, health and human and social services and persons from non-governmental organisations.

(3) The Task Force shall carry out the following activities either directly or by one or more of the constituent ministries as appropriate –

(a) develop and publish within a reasonable time of the coming into force of this Act, a National Plan for the Prevention of Sexual Offences, which shall include the necessary steps to eradicate sexual violence in Guyana;

(b) develop initiatives for prevention of sexual violence;

(c) co-ordinate the implementation of the National Plan;

(d) commission and co-ordinate the collection, publication and sharing of data among government agencies;

(e) establish policies to enable the Government to work with non- governmental organisations, faith-based organisations, community-based organisations and other elements of civil society to prevent sexual violence and provide assistance to victims of sexual violence;

(f) provide guidance to the Sexual Violence Unit;

(g) develop national policy guidelines and protocols for victims of sexual violence and address matters relating to police services, prosecution, medical services, social service, probation service and prison service;

(h) monitor the implementation of this Act, the National Plan and the National Policy Guidelines and protocols;

(i) co-ordinate national education and awareness programmes;

(j) focus special attention on the issues of sexual violence in remote areas, including access to police support and medical attention, court services;

(k) determine the effectiveness of public awareness exercises and measures to be taken to ensure effectiveness;

50. provide guidance on the development of training programmes specified under section 91;”

Section 91 and 90 of the act refer to the kinds of activities and mandates the provision of ongoing training.

Inter-agency protocols to deal with Sexual and Domestic Violence were created and written but were never implemented by the orange wearing leaders.

It isn’t as though nothing was done or recommended by civil society .

Healing Rituals

I commemorated my first IDAVAW in 1997. It seemed critical at the time when there was not much else going on. A few years after, it became clear that the concentration of the same activities in the same period before Christmas as a solution to Stop Gender Based Violence were just activities which were not contributing to meaningful change.

Achievement was seen in repeating what needed to be done and what is not being done year after year after year.

Cynicism aside, as with many things, people do what they could with days and events.

Many people who have paid tribute to those who did not survive and those who survived.

We do not have many spaces in Guyana and elsewhere to deal with healing. This year there has been story telling on social media with the hashtag #lifeinleggings .

Many people are telling their stories. Story telling is one part of healing.

Healing is not once a year like Christmas, healing has no colours associated with it. Healing has no hierarchy and requires listening and affirming.

Healing can be easily facilitated when there is justice and accountability.

When the orange disappears in Guyana, the work has to continue to deal with justice and accountability so as to stop gender based violence.

(Personal note : A woman told me I was abusive and sexist in my behaviour towards her. As far as I know, I did not intend to cause her any harm. She subsequently offered opportunities to redeem myself. I hope that I have become more deliberate and conscious in my behaviour to ensure I am not abusive to anyone)