International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

What do we mean when we talk about "violence against women?" The Beijing Platform for Action, which was adopted by the Trinidad and Tobago government at the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995, defines it as follows:

 "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 private life."

Thus, violence against women encompasses, but is not limited to:

• Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family (for example, battering and sexual abuse of female children);

• Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community (for example, rape and sexual harassment and intimidation at work or in educational institutions);

• Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs (for example, the shooting to death of Dolores Barrow by police officers in September 1998).

Alarmed by a dramatic rise in violence against women around the world, the United Nations has officially designated November 25 as the "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women."

The day was first proposed by women attending the First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter in Bogota, Colombia, in July 1981. The date, November 25, commemorates the deaths in 1960, of Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal – sisters and well-known political activists from the Dominican Republic, who were brutally murdered by the security forces of the then dictator Trujillo.

The UN Development Fund For Women (UNIFEM), which recently spearheaded a global campaign to end violence, estimates that one-quarter of all women world-wide were subjected to rape during their life time. Depending on the country, between 25 percent and 75 percent of women regularly received beatings at home, while more than 120 million women had undergone genital mutilation.

Here in Trinidad and Tobago, one only has to glance through the daily newspapers to get a picture of the problem. Among the headlines for 1999 were:

• Young man caught raping two-year-old

• Teen chopped by ex-lover

• Woman gang-raped in front of her family

• Super cop kills wife, self

• 13-year-old girl gang-raped for 3 days by 3 men

• Woman chopped after trip to buy bread

• Bandit robs woman then performs oral sex on daughter

• Man beats pregnant woman to death.

As we approach the year 2000, it is time we as a society, say: "No more, and never again." If we commit ourselves to creating a world free of violence, our children will only say we stopped the most universal and unpunished crime of all time against half the people of the earth.