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Northern Ireland peace deal: Women’s role finally recognized, says activist

by Narges Mohammadi

Monica McWilliams, a signatory of the agreement, looks back on the work of the Women’s Coalition during peace talks, 25 years ago.

Belfast, Northern Ireland – Northern Irish academic and activist Monica McWilliams says it has taken 25 years for women to be recognised for their roles in bringing peace.

A co-founder of the Women’s Coalition political party and delegate at the multiparty talks that drove forward Northern Ireland’s peace process in the 1990s, she was also elected to the first regional power-sharing assemblies that were established by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Al Jazeera interviewed McWilliams at the recent One Young World 2023 summit in Belfast, on the key role women played in the peace process and unfinished work of the Agreement.

Al Jazeera: How do you look back on your experiences of the peace talks, setting up the Women’s Coalition, running, and getting elected to the Assembly, 25 years on?

Monica McWilliams: The system was never designed for the women’s party – it was designed for the armed groups.

We sat down and worked out that, under that electoral system, we might have enough numbers to get elected ourselves. But we were accidental politicians. We actually never thought we would go into the mainstream negotiations – we always saw them as quite elitist.

And yet we knew we’d done that work on the ground all during those years – The Troubles. We’d been crossing over the peace lines, we’d been mediating, negotiating on the front line. We had a very nuanced understanding – much more than the politicians of the causes themselves. And we figured that, if we could bring that to the table, we’d have something different to say.

We put the messages out around the country – “Wave goodbye to dinosaurs”, “Vote for change”, “A new voice for new times”. But it wasn’t just slogans or soundbites. We actually had a whole series of policies – on what to do about prisoner releases, what to do on victims and reparations – because we’d worked with all these groups. And we were back-channelling with all these groups – the people that nobody else wanted to talk about – during the talks.

[Ex-Sinn Fein leader] Gerry Adams talked about dialogue – there was no dialogue! We were the best informed at the table because everybody was talking to us, and we went out of our way to talk to them. Whereas, both sides in the conflict only talked to their own side.

I was very proud of the day I signed the Agreement. Not only because a women’s party was now a signatory to an international peace agreement, but also because, having been involved, I figured the next generation can lead on from that.

But it’s proved to be an unfinished business – we’ve had a tough time implementing that Agreement.

Al Jazeera: Has there been a clear shift or reappraisal around recognising the role played by women in the peace process?

McWilliams: There has. It was great to see people talking on the 25th anniversary about the importance of women at the peace table. But did it take 25 years? Yes!

Big [political] parties [in the peace talks] just kept telling us, “Wait until we get everything resolved and then we’ll get around to dealing with your issues. The time isn’t right.” Even the women in those parties would say that to us: “Just wind your neck in and wait until we get all this hardware dealt with.”

They saw what we were putting on the table as “software”. It turns out those soft issues, as they saw them, have become the hardest to deal with: the bill of rights that I advised on as [Northern Ireland’s Human Rights] commissioner; the civic forum, equivalent to a citizen’s assembly which would’ve been so needed, was never put in place beyond all of around six weeks. We’re now dealing with legacy in a shameful way – that’s hurt victims instead of healing – and I could go on.

Only now are they starting to see how important all of these things are. I’m very proud that we were there, and really glad that it’s a peace agreement that recognises there were women present.

Al Jazeera: With the number of seats at the Stormont Assembly having been reduced from 108 to 90, smaller parties are increasingly squeezed out. I imagine it would be difficult for something like the Women’s Coalition to have representation at that level now?

McWilliams: When the second Assembly collapsed, I said: “That’ll be us.” Because we came in on the spirit of the Agreement, and [on] people wanting to see new blood and different voices. And then it went back to the old dinosaurs, who fought it out over weapons and over which positions they were going to get in government.

I said we’ll all go back into, you know, small “P” politics. It wasn’t that we walked away from doing our work.

We had electoral reform as one of our proposals and the other parties wouldn’t agree to it – apart from the Progressive Unionist Party.

Politics is narrowed enough in a warzone or a conflicted society – and after conflict is over, you need to broaden the political space. People didn’t understand that here. And it was too short a [space of] time to get them to think: “Don’t go back to the same old status quo. Do this – we know it works.” But they wouldn’t do it.

Source: Al-Jazeera

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CommunityEurope

Women in Italy don’t feel safe – and now they are showing their anger

by Narges Mohammadi

As women are taking to the streets across Europe on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a new chant is rising up from the Italian demonstrations: “burn everything down”.

This is the message launched by the sister of Giulia Cecchettin, the 22-year-old biomedical engineering student who was found dead on 18 November.

Giulia went missing after having dinner with her ex-boyfriend at a local McDonald’s in the Venice province.

After a week of frantic searches, her body was discovered near a lake.

Giulia’s ex-boyfriend was arrested in Germany. A court has approved his extradition to Italy, arriving on Saturday, where he will be taken into custody on arrival and questioned by an investigating judge.

It was Giulia’s sister Elena Cecchettin who, after learning about her death, ignited the debate with an appeal on the Italian TV show Dritto e Rovescio: “For Giulia, don’t make a minute of silence. For Giulia, burn everything down.”

This phrase inspired by a poem by Peruvian activist Cristina Torres-Cáceres, sparked protests across Italy, including a minute of noise held in several schools including the University of Padua, where Giulia was scheduled to get her degree in biomedical engineering five days.

But what exactly does “burn it all down” mean?

As an Italian woman myself, who used to walk through the same streets students are now protesting in, I sadly know the answer.

Elena called on Italians to bring down “the rape culture built on actions that aim at limiting women’s freedom”, like checking obsessively the partner’s phone, being possessive or even catcalling.

I experienced firsthand what that system looks like. The unwanted attention from male colleagues, the sexist comments, and even the “accidental” boob graze.

Many of my female friends shared with me in the past week how they were harassed on the streets by groups of drunk men, how a stranger touched their legs on a public train when they were just 15, or how jealousy turned into domestic abuse before their eyes.

Although not all these actions can lead to episodes of extreme violence, it does create an environment in which we as women never really feel at ease.

“As female students, we don’t feel safe,” Emma Ruzzon, student-body president and member of Unione degli Universitari of Padua, which is organising the minute of noise for 25 November said.

Giulia Cecchettin, 22, a biomedical engineering student, was found dead on 18 November (AFP via Getty Images)

As women are taking to the streets across Europe on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a new chant is rising up from the Italian demonstrations: “burn everything down”.

This is the message launched by the sister of Giulia Cecchettin, the 22-year-old biomedical engineering student who was found dead on 18 November.

Giulia went missing after having dinner with her ex-boyfriend at a local McDonald’s in the Venice province. After a week of frantic searches, her body was discovered near a lake.

Giulia’s ex-boyfriend was arrested in Germany. A court has approved his extradition to Italy, arriving on Saturday, where he will be taken into custody on arrival and questioned by an investigating judge.

It was Giulia’s sister Elena Cecchettin who, after learning about her death, ignited the debate with an appeal on the Italian TV show Dritto e Rovescio: “For Giulia, don’t make a minute of silence. For Giulia, burn everything down.”

This phrase inspired by a poem by Peruvian activist Cristina Torres-Cáceres, sparked protests across Italy, including a minute of noise held in several schools including the University of Padua, where Giulia was scheduled to get her degree in biomedical engineering five days.

But what exactly does “burn it all down” mean?

As an Italian woman myself, who used to walk through the same streets students are now protesting in, I sadly know the answer.

Elena called on Italians to bring down “the rape culture built on actions that aim at limiting women’s freedom”, like checking obsessively the partner’s phone, being possessive or even catcalling.

I experienced firsthand what that system looks like. The unwanted attention from male colleagues, the sexist comments, and even the “accidental” boob graze.

Many of my female friends shared with me in the past week how they were harassed on the streets by groups of drunk men, how a stranger touched their legs on a public train when they were just 15, or how jealousy turned into domestic abuse before their eyes.

Although not all these actions can lead to episodes of extreme violence, it does create an environment in which we as women never really feel at ease.

“As female students, we don’t feel safe,” Emma Ruzzon, student-body president and member of Unione degli Universitari of Padua, which is organising the minute of noise for 25 November, told The Independent.

“We know of female friends and classmates who were harassed while coming back home at night on their own, but even during the day, in bars, in the universities’ hallways”.

“There is also a number of women who don’t report [the abuse]. Trust in the law enforcement is close to zero”.

If this sounds too familiar to you, it is because harassment and abuse is not only an Italian problem.

Giulia was the 103rd woman to die in 2023 in Italy, according to the interior minister’s data.

This number is not far from the UK’s, where 109 women have been killed so far in 2023. Trust in the police is also dropping following cases like Sarah Everard or, more recently, Gracie Spinks, who was killed by her stalker after she had reported him to the police.

However, Giulia’s death is (quite literally) making more noise than ever in Italy, because it is bursting a bubble that has been building up for years.

The #MeToo movement that shook the core of the United States movie industry in 2016 never really took off in Italy, and women like myself were often left confused on how to report or describe harassment and abuse.

It was Giulia’s sister’s call to action that struck a chord with me and many other Italians, pushing us to re-ignite the discussion on sexism and harassment – and, more importantly, asking men to be accountable for their actions and those of their friends.

But change must also come from within the institutions.

Giulia Cecchettin, 22, a biomedical engineering student, was found dead on 18 November (AFP via Getty Images)

As women are taking to the streets across Europe on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a new chant is rising up from the Italian demonstrations: “burn everything down”.

This is the message launched by the sister of Giulia Cecchettin, the 22-year-old biomedical engineering student who was found dead on 18 November.

Giulia went missing after having dinner with her ex-boyfriend at a local McDonald’s in the Venice province. After a week of frantic searches, her body was discovered near a lake.

Giulia’s ex-boyfriend was arrested in Germany. A court has approved his extradition to Italy, arriving on Saturday, where he will be taken into custody on arrival and questioned by an investigating judge.

It was Giulia’s sister Elena Cecchettin who, after learning about her death, ignited the debate with an appeal on the Italian TV show Dritto e Rovescio: “For Giulia, don’t make a minute of silence. For Giulia, burn everything down.”

This phrase inspired by a poem by Peruvian activist Cristina Torres-Cáceres, sparked protests across Italy, including a minute of noise held in several schools including the University of Padua, where Giulia was scheduled to get her degree in biomedical engineering five days.

But what exactly does “burn it all down” mean?

As an Italian woman myself, who used to walk through the same streets students are now protesting in, I sadly know the answer.

Elena called on Italians to bring down “the rape culture built on actions that aim at limiting women’s freedom”, like checking obsessively the partner’s phone, being possessive or even catcalling.

I experienced firsthand what that system looks like. The unwanted attention from male colleagues, the sexist comments, and even the “accidental” boob graze.

Many of my female friends shared with me in the past week how they were harassed on the streets by groups of drunk men, how a stranger touched their legs on a public train when they were just 15, or how jealousy turned into domestic abuse before their eyes.

Although not all these actions can lead to episodes of extreme violence, it does create an environment in which we as women never really feel at ease.

“As female students, we don’t feel safe,” Emma Ruzzon, student-body president and member of Unione degli Universitari of Padua, which is organising the minute of noise for 25 November, told The Independent.

“We know of female friends and classmates who were harassed while coming back home at night on their own, but even during the day, in bars, in the universities’ hallways”.

“There is also a number of women who don’t report [the abuse]. Trust in the law enforcement is close to zero”.

If this sounds too familiar to you, it is because harassment and abuse is not only an Italian problem.

Giulia was the 103rd woman to die in 2023 in Italy, according to the interior minister’s data.

This number is not far from the UK’s, where 109 women have been killed so far in 2023. Trust in the police is also dropping following cases like Sarah Everard or, more recently, Gracie Spinks, who was killed by her stalker after she had reported him to the police.

However, Giulia’s death is (quite literally) making more noise than ever in Italy, because it is bursting a bubble that has been building up for years.

The #MeToo movement that shook the core of the United States movie industry in 2016 never really took off in Italy, and women like myself were often left confused on how to report or describe harassment and abuse.

It was Giulia’s sister’s call to action that struck a chord with me and many other Italians, pushing us to re-ignite the discussion on sexism and harassment – and, more importantly, asking men to be accountable for their actions and those of their friends.

But change must also come from within the institutions.

Giorgia Meloni, who had to deal with a stalker herself before becoming Italy’s prime minister, has already announced that more funds will be directed to the anti-violence plan, sensibility campaigns in schools and the promotion of a helpline for victims of stalking and violence.

Is this enough to “burn down the system”? It won’t be, unless we can guarantee that the push for change will not die with Giulia. Every one of us in Italy, but also in the UK and across the world, has the responsibility to work every day to make sure that come next 25 November, the list of women killed in their country will be considerably shorter.

Source: Independent News

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Australia and OceaniaSociety

First Pink Sleepbus launches on the Sunshine Coast amid housing crisis

by Narges Mohammadi

Queensland’s first Pink Sleepbus will provide vulnerable women and children a safe place to rest on the Sunshine Coast next month.

A specialised service providing “compassion and a hand up”, the sleepbus is the first of five destined for regions across the state.

The pink bus was donated by ComfortDelGro Corporation Australia after being decommissioned in Gladstone.

Constructed in Melbourne, they each cost about $100,000 to build and launch.

The other buses, which are for men, are destined for Mackay, Bundaberg, Hervey Bay and Redcliffe next year.

Maroochy Neighbourhood Centre fundraiser Mark Ellis said the bus was essential to respond to a rise in homelessness on the Sunshine Coast.

Shocked by the 2019 bashing death of homeless man David Collins, Mr Ellis inspired a fundraising effort that delivered the region’s first Blue Sleepbus for men in 2022.

“Sleep deprivation destroys them,” Mr Ellis said.

“When you sleep rough for months, your mental health deteriorates, then your physical health deteriorates and then sadly, after time, you die.”

Mr Ellis said he hoped the sleepbuses would help put a stop to the unnecessary deaths.

“But we need volunteers,” Mr Ellis said.

“You can ask for help if people who care are around you.”

He said a permanent end to homelessness was desperately needed.

“They’re sleeping right outside our door … for us to go, ‘I don’t want to know you’ is arrogant,” Mr Ellis said.

He said the general public needed to “get on board” because the homeless had nowhere else to go.

“I’ve seen a steep rise of desperate people living on the streets — it has doubled in the past two years,” Mr Ellis said.

“Just in the past two weeks, we have given 120 food parcels to new families in need.”

Designed with compassion

Sleepbus chief executive and founder, Simon Rowe, fitted out and delivered the bus to the beachside suburb of Maroochydore in September.

With million-dollar apartments lining the surrounding streets, he sat behind the wheel, tooting the horn and encouraged people to volunteer.

“I basically cut a giant hole in the side of the bus and ruined it,” Mr Rowe said.

The bus has 20 individual sleep pods with their own lockable door, toilet, bed light and electronics charging station.

“The side lifts up to allow people to be able to see in from a distance — it builds rapport,” Mr Rowe said.

He said the bus was pet friendly, had storage for belongings and CCTV surveillance.

“It’s about getting a quiet, safe night sleep,” he said.

“We have security cameras all around the outside of the bus.

“Everybody has an intercom and can talk to the caretaker if they want to leave in the middle of the night.”

Safe place to park needed

The Sleepbus service is designed to help women like Mez (surname withheld to protect privacy), who has been living in a van for a decade after falling on hard times.

She said she had been without a home for so long that she didn’t think about not having one anymore.

“I got a personal loan to buy my van and I’m paying that off,” Mez said.

“So, even if I wanted to, I still couldn’t afford rent money.”

Mez said she had observed more homeless women and children living in their cars in recent years.

“It’s not safe. There’s a lot more domestic violence women [victims] now,” she said.

She said people living in their cars needed a safe place to park.

“So, we can all group up, and we can all feel safe together,” she said.

“Being out in the street in your van, you’re still vulnerable.

“We need cover — out of the rain and storms — can someone help us with that?”

Call for volunteers

Sleepbus worker Sally Pickersgill said she liked giving back to the community.

She said her job was to settle guests in when they arrived to sleep on the bus.

“It’s not difficult at all,” she said.

“I make sure that they’re really comfortable and that they feel safe.

She said people were homeless for a number of reasons.

Everybody makes a better decision when they’re able to lay flat and have a good night’s sleep,” she said.

Ms Pickersgill said volunteering “changes your world for the better”.

“You could sit at home and watch the television for three hours … or you could come out here, connect and make a difference to people’s lives,” she said.

Volunteers of Pink Sleepbus require a blue card and are supported to attend to the specific needs of women and children.

Organisers said an operational date for sleepers would be announced as soon as sufficient volunteers were engaged.

Source: ABC News

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Australia and OceaniaCommunity

Tasmania Police are still mistaking family violence victims for abusers. For too many women, correcting the record is impossible

by Narges Mohammadi

When two police officers arrived at Bianca’s* front door in the middle of a cold winter’s night last year, she assumed they were coming to tell her they’d taken out a family violence order against her partner.

Just a few hours earlier she’d gone to Hobart Police Station to report that he’d assaulted her after she’d broken up with him. She followed him home across the road from a cafe they’d met at, she told officers, saying she wanted to “end things with love and kindness”; he regularly stormed off during their relationship and punished her with “silent treatment” for days, and now she wanted closure on her terms.

But when she stepped inside his house, she said, he grabbed her and shoved her into the door. She was so shocked and upset that she slapped him, but knew immediately she was in trouble when she saw the look in his eyes — at six-foot-two, he towered above her petite frame.

“I thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s going to kill me’,” said Bianca, a lawyer. “He grabbed me by the ear and … shoved my head into the brick wall and pinned me there … I honestly thought he was going to keep slamming my head into the wall — that he was either going to kill me or give me brain damage.”

Which is why she was so shocked to hear that, after interviewing her partner, the officers concluded Bianca was the aggressor and were naming her as the respondent on a police family violence order (PFVO). She’d been completely honest with police, she’d pointed out her injuries — she assumed they would protect her.

“I felt such deep shame that I was being labelled a perpetrator when I’m so committed to looking after people who are vulnerable,” she said. “I thought that if you tell the truth, and you have evidence, you’ll get a just response. And I learned the hard way that is not the case.”

A simmering crisis

Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so surprised, though. For months domestic violence workers in Tasmania have been warning of a simmering misidentification crisis: of mounting cases where police have mistaken the victim for the perpetrator and taken out a protection order against them or charged them with criminal offences — with devastating consequences.

Unlike police forces in other jurisdictions, Tasmania Police have unique authority to issue final 12-month family violence orders which can only be revoked by the Magistrates Court — a central feature of 2004 reforms designed to strengthen the state’s response to family violence. But in too many cases, experts say, the system is backfiring on the people it’s supposed to protect, with misidentified victims finding it almost impossible to have orders overturned.

And the costs are incalculable: Tasmanians who have been wrongly named on PFVOs have lost their jobs, their children, their homes, their faith in police and, for some migrant and refugee women, their visa — their ticket to remain in Australia.

Data obtained by ABC News earlier this year showed police issue PFVOs against female respondents at more than triple the rate of courts, raising questions about whether officers are always picking the right perpetrator. Now, new figures reveal the number of applications to revoke PFVOs increased 102 per cent in the six years to June 2023, with applications by female respondents jumping 154 per cent.

 

The missing ‘safety net’

“What I find interesting is the revocation of orders and the [apparent] misidentification is a lot higher for women,” said Yvette Cehtel, chief executive at Women’s Legal Service Tasmania. “That doesn’t surprise me because … I think women are much more likely than men to own up to their behaviour” — for instance, if they retaliated or fought back against an abusive partner.

“And when that is taken out of the context of the pattern of abuse in the relationship it can constitute an offence,” Ms Cehtel said. “So police, if they don’t consider the coercive control that sits around the actual incident … may see her as the perpetrator.”

Female victims of domestic violence in Australia are also misidentified because they’ve presented as “hysterical” or angry, or because police haven’t seen through an abuser’s calculated attempts to manipulate the system. Though there has been hardly any research on misidentification in Tasmania, studies in other states show First Nations women and those from culturally diverse communities are particularly at risk.

Compounding the problem is that Tasmania’s PFVO system lacks what experts describe as the crucial “safety net” of judicial oversight, meaning police have outsized power to make final decisions about who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.

Many advocates are now urging that the Family Violence Act be reviewed and redesigned along the lines of legislation in other states, where police can issue temporary safety notices which ostensibly protect victims until a court can review the matter and make or not make final orders.

“Timely judicial review is absolutely essential for cases of misidentification,” said Anna*, who was misidentified by Tasmania Police in 2021. “But at the moment, PFVOs are a sentence without a hearing. When the police respond to family violence, they should be there to protect, not to punish. But PFVOs, which last for 12 months and often have a huge impact on people’s lives — especially when police make the wrong decision — are a punishment.”

A punishment for migrant women

They are a punishment particularly for many migrant women. Taya Ketelaar-Jones, a senior lawyer at the Tasmanian Refugee Legal Service, which runs the Family Violence Migration Service for victim-survivors on temporary visas, said a review of her case files suggests 99 per cent of clients named as respondents on PFVOs have been misidentified.

“It may be because it’s an easier option for police,” Ms Ketelaar-Jones said. Officers frequently take out PFVOs against both parties, often in cases when the couple isn’t fluent in English and investigating further to determine who is most in need of protection isn’t necessarily straightforward.

“Using interpreters is essential. It’s not a matter of convenience or a matter of availability … it’s a human right,” she said. “But too often, we’re told the police couldn’t get an interpreter. That would be the number one priority for reducing rates of misidentification.”

In some cases, misidentification can result in victims of family violence being denied visas. The Department of Home Affairs “rightly” takes a “very serious stance” on domestic violence, Ms Ketelaar-Jones said, and visa applicants must declare if they have been subject to a domestic violence order. This can be a “big issue” for migrants who have been misidentified, she said, because it could mean they fail the “character test”.

Misidentification can have even more serious ramifications for migrants whose abusive partner is their visa sponsor. When such a relationship ends, an applicant would not be granted a partner visa unless they can prove they’ve experienced family violence, Ms Ketelaar-Jones said — usually a stressful, years-long process requiring a high standard of evidence.

“So for somebody who’s been misidentified on a PFVO, immediately the Department is going to scrutinise that case so much more heavily, and they’re going to have a much harder time proving that they’ve been a victim of family violence,” she said. “It’s already a very, very difficult process. And in those scenarios, it’s so much more difficult.”

Occasionally when clients have been misidentified on PFVOs, Ms Ketelaar-Jones will work with other services to try and have the order revoked, sometimes by approaching police directly and explaining the nuances of the situation and the consequences for their visa. But this strategy is rarely successful. “We find a lot of the time they won’t be revoked,” she said. “From reviewing our matters, there is a clear correlation between being misidentified and named as a respondent on a PFVO and being refused a partner visa application, if the client is pursuing a family violence pathway.”

All of this generally takes a “huge toll” on clients’ mental health, she said. The stress and uncertainty of migration legal issues aside, women on temporary visas may not have access to critical health and social services, employment or other support they might otherwise have.

And most are at such a “point of crisis” that the idea of applying to the court to have an order revoked is too “foreign and overwhelming”. “Their priority is, ‘Am I going to be forced to leave Australia?’ It’s a critical moment of not being able to think about anything else.”

Seven traumatic months of life on hold

For Bianca, the dominoes began falling during her first visit to Hobart Police Station. The constable who took her statement didn’t ask about her partner’s history of emotional abuse or suggest a medical examination, she said, despite her telling them he’d injured her head and ear.

The officer also omitted what she felt were crucial details and context of the incident and selectively wrote down parts of her story that were “disadvantageous” to her. “I felt like I was having to actively fight to get my story heard,” she said. “It wasn’t an empowering process.”

In hindsight, she thinks the police concluded she was the aggressor for a couple of reasons. One, because they took an “incident-based” approach and seemed to focus on her admission that she’d followed her partner home and slapped him after he shoved her — without taking into account his alleged history of coercive control, the fact he was bigger and stronger, or her claim that he assaulted her, injuring her head and ripping the buttons off her coat.

As she sees it, the officers believed her partner’s account that she assaulted him whilst “trespassing” on his property and he “moved” her to defend himself.

But she’s also concerned her Asian ethnicity was a factor, especially after viewing footage of the police interview with her partner. In it, she said the constable jokes with him and apologises for having to ask “annoying” questions — a starkly different tone to what she’d expect of an impartial officer investigating a family violence matter.

“My ex appears as a calm white man and I would have appeared as a highly distressed coloured woman,” she said. “And whether we like it or not, we live in a society where we assign more credibility to white men than we do to coloured women. I can’t ever know for sure but I suspect that played a part in who was believed that night.”

After her shock wore off, Bianca flipped into lawyer mode. She went to an independent medical doctor to have her injuries documented. She sought expensive legal advice. She wrote a long statement for police detailing her account of the incident and her partner’s history of abuse.

But still police refused to withdraw the PFVO against her. So she began what would turn out to be a stressful, exhausting process of applying to the Magistrates Court to have the order revoked — a step very few women are prepared to take, frontline workers say.

Thanks to court and police delays it took seven months for Bianca’s matter to be heard. “I found the process highly traumatic and unnecessarily difficult,” she said. “My life was basically on hold … and there were many times where I thought I’d give up, that it wasn’t worth it. Thankfully, I had people around me supporting me and telling me to keep fighting … but I lost faith in getting any kind of positive institutional response. I thought, ‘This is a system that is failing victims badly’.”

A ‘David and Goliath’ battle

One of the biggest hurdles came in the form of six statements from officers at Hobart Police Station. Each outlined their connection to Bianca’s matter and essentially supported the decision to list her as the respondent on a PFVO.

The declaration from the constable who took Bianca’s statement also contained glaring factual errors — for instance, he listed the wrong address for the cafe they met at, implying she’d followed him further than she did. “The extent to which they were trying to discredit me was distressing,” she said. “Why were they investing such significant resources into fighting this order? … It felt like it was me versus six police officers, a David and Goliath battle.”

Although it wasn’t a problem for Bianca, another major challenge for misidentified victims who have asked police to vary or revoke their PFVO is a legal test in Tasmania’s Family Violence Act. It requires that applicants seeking a revocation in the Magistrates Court be able to demonstrate that there has been “a substantial change in the relevant circumstances” since the order was made.

But lawyers say it’s a problem because it overlooks the fact that for most misidentified victims, nothing has changed — rather, the PFVO should not have been issued in the first place.

“It’s a massive hurdle that needs reviewing,” Ms Cehtel said. “The Magistrates Court should be able to review the decision that was made by police at the time … not just where there has been a substantial change in circumstances, but where there has been a mistake or error in judgement.”

Some victim-survivors agree the change in circumstances clause — which appears on the court’s PFVO revocation application form — is deterring misidentified women from pursuing justice. Anna said she was told by a police officer she had “a snowflake’s chance in hell” of getting the PFVO against her revoked.

“Later, when I investigated the possibility of applying to the court for revocation, I saw that condition and it just seemed like another barrier,” she said — so she didn’t proceed with an application. “Even though my ex and I had separated, I interpreted it to mean, ‘How was I less of a danger to him?’ And I knew, and my ex knew, that I’d never been a danger to him.”

The hearing
I’d never been a danger to him. Bianca feels it was one of many crucial details in her case that police glossed over. In the end, it seems they arrived at a similar conclusion, emailing her lawyer a few days before her court hearing earlier this year to say they were agreeing to revoke her PFVO.

At the hearing she received an order confirming that her PFVO was revoked from that day forward. But she received no explanation for the police’s sudden backflip, no acknowledgement that she had been misidentified, and no apology.

“I’ve told the truth the entire time, I had everything documented … I had an unshakeable belief that I was not the perpetrator — I was the victim,” Bianca said. “I also had the most incredible support network … but that’s a lot of ducks you have to have lined up to be able to successfully navigate the system. For anyone doing it alone it’s virtually impossible. And it shouldn’t be that hard when you’re also suffering from having been abused by the person you thought you loved. It’s too much.”

Rob Blackwood said Tasmania Police was unable to comment publicly on specific cases but said the issue of misidentification was “one that is being considered nationally and is not isolated to Tasmania”. Tasmania Police recently examined the “issues” that arise when officers take out PFVOs against both parties, he said, and was also developing a policy paper that “considers and responds” to the problem of misidentification generally, including how best to identify the person most in need of protection.

For more information click here.

Source: ABC News

 

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Australia and OceaniaWomen Pioneers

Maryborough Endeavour timber facility teaches people with disability skills to further their careers

by Narges Mohammadi

Kirsten Drier is breaking barriers in more ways than one. Ten years ago, she was afraid her disability would be a barrier to getting a job.

“People just don’t understand disability and how good we can be at things,” she said.

“It can be frustrating because we just need to be given an opportunity to prove we can be a really good worker.”

Ms Drier, who has autism, helps train new employees at the Endeavour timber facility in Maryborough, three hours’ north of Brisbane.

She said a high school teacher opened her career pathway.

“[The teacher] said, ‘Are you any good at manual arts’,” Ms Drier said.

“And I thought, ‘OK yeah, I’ll give this a shot’.”

Working with wood

Endeavour’s timber yard produces more than 800,000 wooden stakes and product

s for mines and other industries each year.

Every one of its 43 employees has a disability and is supported by supervisors.

It is part of Endeavour’s push to give people with intellectual disability the skills they need to pursue future employment.

The charity runs 28 employment sites from Cairns to Melbourne in industries ranging from food packaging to timber products and e-waste recycling services.

“It’s about providing the opportunity for our employees to go as far as they want to go, in their own time,” Endeavour’s senior business manager, Scott Reed, said.

“[That’s] with the knowledge that if there is the opportunity for them to move into open employment into the future, that can and will happen.”

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, people with disability are twice as likely to be unemployed than those without disability and 88 per cent of employed people with disability do not require extra support from their employers.

National Disability Services Queensland manager Jason McKey said people with disability were often overlooked for roles that they would fill with ease.

“There is certainly some stigma surrounding employing people with disability Australia-wide,” Mr McKey said.

“A lot of it is basically ignorance on the part of people not realising the terrific potential that they’re missing out on by employing people with disability.”

At the Maryborough timber yard, workers gain qualifications in forklift driving, sawmilling, and other skills.

“We had forklift drivers here, they went elsewhere and got a job and they’re loving it and they’re happy,” Ms Drier said.

“Without this workplace, we’d just be sitting at home bored doing nothing.”

A ‘win-win’

Mr McKey said more education about hiring workers with disability would lead to far greater economic benefits.

“If you walk down the street today, you see so many vacancies, people wanted, and they’re overlooking the fact that people with disabilities can do the job,” he said.

“It’s a win-win for the person, the employer and the Australian economy.”

Ms Drier said she hoped to one day secure a job outside the timber yard, but she was content in her role.

“They keep me busy here and if I can improve other people’s skills and help them out, then that’s a really good day,” she said.

Source: ABC News

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Central AmericaCulture

7 days till “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women”

by Narges Mohammadi

New York — This year the UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE Campaign will commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Wednesday, 22 November 2023, from 10am to 11.30am EST. Under the global umbrella theme “UNiTE! Invest to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls”, the event will shine a spotlight on the importance of financing prevention strategies to stop violence from occurring in the first place, galvanize action to secure increased investments, and kickstart the activities of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence.

Media advisory: International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women will call for long-term, sustainable investments to prevent violence against women and girls

The event will launch a report by the Accelerator for GBV Prevention and the Equality Institute—formalized as a Collective Commitment with the Generation Equality Action Coalition on GBV—showing that financial commitments to gender-based violence (GBV) prevention remain severely insufficient, accounting for only 0.2 per cent of overall aid and development spending.

The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November will kick off the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, lasting until 10 December. UN Women will be inviting Member States, civil society, UN entities, the private sector, women’s rights organizations, and individuals to join the 16 Days of Activism, calling for increased long-term, sustainable investments and raising awareness of the need to end gender-based violence now.

WHEN: Wednesday, 22 November 2023, from 10am to 11.30am (EST)

PARTICIPANTS:

  • Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina J. Mohammed
  • President of the 78th Session of the General Assembly, Dennis Francis
  • Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director, Sima Bahous
  • Under-Secretary-General and UNFPA Executive Director, Dr. Natalia Kanem
  • Member States representatives
  • Generation Equality Action Coalition Leaders and Commitment Makers
  • Civil society representatives
  • Host: Melissa Mahtani, international affairs journalist

The event will feature a musical performance by Veronica Stern and the Sing for Hope Choir and spoken word performances by Amanda Rose Rodrigues and Salome Agbaroji, the 2023 U.S. National Youth Poet Laureate.

HOW TO WATCH THE EVENT: The event will take place in person and will be livecast through UN Web TV and UN Women’s Youtube channel. Follow the online conversation using the hashtags #NoExcuse and #16days and follow @UN_Women on X.

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AsiaWomen Pioneers

UN’s top Woman Police Officer from Indonesia ‘a young agent of change’

by Narges Mohammadi

An police officer from Indonesia  serving at the UN Mission in the Central African Republic, MINUSCA, was on Thursday awarded a top peacekeeping honour.

First Sergeant Renita Rismayanti received the prestigious Woman Police Officer of the Year Award during a ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York.

At 27, she is the youngest recipient in the Award’s 13-year history.

Working for change

Ms. Rismayanti from Indonesia is deployed as a crime database officer at MINUSCA, which has a mandate that includes protecting civilians and supporting security sector reform.

She has helped conceptualize and develop a database that enables UN Police (UNPOL) to map and analyse crime and disorder hotspots.

“I accept this award on behalf of all those quietly working for positive change,” she said.

‘Remember your limitless potential’

Ms. Rismayanti Indonesia thanked the MINUSCA leadership, her section chief, and her colleagues.

“Through great dedication and teamwork, we have achieved great success,” she said, noting that their work has contributed to enhancing security for vulnerable communities, including women and girls.

Reflecting on her journey as a police officer, she spoke about the importance of listening to your inner voice and never giving up on becoming the person you aspire to be.

“To all women, wherever you may be, I urge you to remember your limitless potential,” she said.

“You possess the power to enact change, inspire others, and leave an enduring mark upon the world. Let us extend our hand to those seeking their path, for genuine empowerment lies in uplifting others.”

Agent of change

The head of UN Peacekeeping, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, commended Ms. Rismayanti for making both the United Nations and her home country very proud.

Her work is in turn helping the CAR security forces to better plan for their operations in a gender-sensitive manner, he added.

“Today, we are celebrating a United Nations Police officer, who, as a young agent of change, has advanced the United Nations’ efforts to leverage data and technology to ensure the efficiency of our operations and relevance of the United Nations for the future,” he said.

A top priority

Mr. Lacroix underlined that the Women, Peace and Security Agenda remains a core priority for the UN Department of Peace Operations.

He said efforts continue towards making peacekeeping operations more gender-responsive and to advance women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in peacekeeping and in peace and political processes.

“In light of the threats to personal safety which disproportionately affect women, UNPOL’s confidence-building activities and patrols continuously undertaken in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and South Sudan have helped to remove impediments to women’s participation and stabilize basic security conditions,” he added.

He congratulated the UN Police Division for its efforts towards meeting gender parity targets, noting that women account for six out of 13 heads or deputy heads of UN police components in field missions.

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Central AmericaSociety

Creating safe digital spaces free of trolls, doxing, and hate speech

by Narges Mohammadi

Despite the enormous potential of technology, digital tools, and the internet, these have also perpetuated gender disparities and introduced new forms of oppression for women and girls.

For many, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, is new terminology but not new phenomena.

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence takes many forms, including cyberbullying, online harassment, hate speech, doxing, intimate image abuse, trolling, or deep fakes.

Women, girls, and gender-non-conforming individuals are more likely to be targeted and experience more severe and lasting consequences because of their gender. Studies across the world show that 16 to 58 per cent of women and girls have been targeted by violence online.

The impacts of this type of violence extend beyond the digital sphere, entrenching inequalities and posing a significant threat to women’s rights and safety both online and off.

How does digitalization impact violence against women and girls?

To effectively prevent online and technology-facilitated violence, it is crucial to understand its specificities and its impact on women and girls.

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Central AmericaCommunity

What is gender-responsive budgeting?

by Narges Mohammadi

Gender-responsive budgeting is a strategy that creates budgets that work for everyone. By considering and analyzing the unique and diverse needs of every person, gender-responsive budgets strive for a fair distribution of resources.

Current economic models and budgets can lead to fiscal policies and budgets that are biased. By not considering women’s needs, budgets can have unintended negative consequences. For example, according to recent surveys, the global value of unpaid care and domestic work for women aged 15 and over stands at around $10.8 trillion annually – three times the size of the world’s tech industry.

But when gender gaps are brought to the surface, governments can target available resources to address gender inequalities and support sustainable, inclusive development for all.

Gender-responsive budgets foster a sense of justice, strengthen government accountability, and support better alignment of national budgets with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Designing gender-responsive budgets

There is no one-fits-all application of gender-responsive budgeting, but we know what works.

For gender-responsive budgets to be effective, the priorities and needs of all people must be understood and included at every stage of the budget design and planning process.

UN Women has identified a series of steps to support their application:

  • Introduce laws mandating gender-responsive budgeting and clear guidelines and tools for implementation.
  • Analyse gender gaps and use findings to shape and monitor existing and future budgets.
  • Increase transparency on how budgets are allocated and spent to address gender gaps, follow the money, and ensure people can hold their governments to account.
  • Recognize the diverse needs of women, considering factors like socio-economic status, location, race, and ethnicity and encouraging lawmakers to engage with women from various backgrounds to ensure policies and public financing adequately support women and girls in all their diversity.

Implementing gender-responsive budgets

Gender-responsive budgets require a whole government approach, robust institutional frameworks, political will, laws in place to support equal distribution of resources, reliable data to fully understand the diverse needs of people, engagement with the private sector and civil society, and monitoring and evaluation systems to inform future budget adjustments.

The SDGs set 17 objectives for countries to meet by 2030. Goal 5 calls for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls and has the only SDG indicator that measures the proportion of governments with systems to track and make public resource allocations for gender equality.

Amid a backdrop of a global polycrisis, national budgets remain strained with many unable to deploy the necessary investments to meet the SDGs and build stronger, more equal and resilient societies.

Over 100 countries have initiated efforts on gender-responsive budgeting to address gender equality and the historical underinvestment in essential services for women and girls.

Data from 105 countries shows that only 26 per cent have comprehensive systems to track gender equality allocations in the budget.

Without robust systems, countries cannot cost, allocate and spend resources to implement national gender equality laws and policies, such as allocating resources for gender-based violence prevention and research, investing in services for survivors of violence, creating frameworks to eliminate discrimination in the workplace and putting provisions in place that tackle gender-based discrimination in healthcare, among many others.

Despite existing gaps in gender equality spending, the data also shows that a majority of countries have made some progress on gender-responsive budgeting and are working to improve their systems.

Tailored approaches to gender-responsive budgeting

Morocco

In 2013, Morocco’s finance ministry and UN Women launched the Center of Excellence for Gender-Responsive Budgeting. The yearly Gender Budget Report is a groundbreaking tool that provides lawmakers with insights into how public policies are working toward gender equality on a local and national level and informs voting on finance bills.

Austria

Austria is a global pioneer in gender-responsive budgeting and one of the few countries that has enshrined gender equality in the constitution and made gender equality one of nine elements against which budget proposals are assessed. Key policies include embedding gender equality in educational curricula, prioritizing the prevention of violence against women through the creation of helplines and shelters, promoting women in leadership, and boosting the participation of women in politics. Performance targets on gender equality in budgets are also assessed and results are reported to parliament and published online.

Colombia

The country’s National Development Plan fully integrates gender equality, and includes a gender budget tracer, mandated by law, to track how the budget is allocated and spent. This information is presented every year to parliament. To illustrate how this works in practice, the latest budget tracer data identified inadequate budget allocations for sexual and reproductive health. Nonstate actors used this information to advocate for more resources, which resulted in government budget increases.

Rwanda

The national gender strategy includes actions to address early childhood education, gender-based violence, land management, and education. The government routinely assesses the adequacy of budgets to identify resource gaps for implementing gender-responsive policies. Annual gender budget statements present gender objectives, budget allocations, and actual budget execution. This type of report enables the government (and nonstate actors) to follow the money and assess if budgets are delivering on policy commitments.

Source: United Nations

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EuropeSociety

Iceland’s women just went on strike. How is the rest of Europe doing on the gender pay gap?

by Narges Mohammadi

Iceland is seen globally as a bastion of equality, a place where the rights of all citizens are upheld regardless of gender. But even Iceland doesn’t have full parity when it comes to pay.

Yet where it shows its status as a forward-thinking country is in how it responds to this issue: on October 24, thousands of women took part in an all-day strike. Even the country’s prime minister joined in.

Katrín Jakobsdottír was one of the thousands of Icelandic women and non-binary people who took part in the “kvennafrí,” inspired by the very first women’s day off in Iceland 48 years ago.

They downed tools not just to draw attention to the country’s gender pay gap, but also to related issues like gender-based violence.

The small irony here, however, is that while Iceland’s gender pay gap is 10.2 per cent, it’s been named the most gender-equal country in the world for 14 years running.

When we look at Europe overall, the gender pay gap in the EU is just under 13 per cent and has only changed minimally over the last decade.

It means that women earn 13 per cent on average less per hour than men, and would need to work an extra 1.5 months to make up the difference.

Cultural and societal reasons

There are many factors that play into the gender pay gap, including cultural and societal factors, caring roles, and part-time work rates. Because of this, the gap varies from country to country.

It ranges from less than 5 per cent in Luxembourg, Romania, Slovenia, Italy, and Poland to more than 18 per cent in Germany, Austria, Estonia, and Latvia, according to the European Commission.

Though in most countries the gender pay gap has decreased over the last 10 years, progress is (very) slow. The gap has decreased by just 2.8 percentage points in 10 years.

In an effort to bring about wider change faster, the EU has introduced the work-life balance directive (to help ease the pressure when it comes to caring duties), gender balance on corporate boards, and the European Care Strategy.

Gender equality in the workplace in Iceland

But while there can be overarching attempts at remedying the gender pay gap, individual companies and workplaces need to play their part too.

On a very basic level, when employees are treated differently because of their gender, they don’t feel valued. Creating a diversified and equal workplace is beneficial for all, as it means opening the floor to a variety of viewpoints and experiences.

Gender equality helps everyone to reach their potential, something that companies are increasingly recognizing.

The economic benefits of closing the gap can even have a positive effect on GDP. Creating a more balanced workplace also has knock-on effects: the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index 2023 found that for its members, on average, the mean gender pay gap is 50 per cent lower for companies with women CEOs.

In some European countries, such as Ireland, companies now have to publicly publish their gender pay gap data, which means we get an insight into how they’re addressing the issue.

For example, Accenture reported that its mean (average) gender pay gap in Ireland is 9.05 per cent, and median (midpoint) gender pay gap is 1.34 per cent.

The company conducts an annual pay equity review, and its last review found 100 per cent pay equity for women compared to men in Ireland.

It has also detailed what it’s doing to close the gap, including shifting towards a 50/50 gender-balanced workforce at all career levels in the country.

Meanwhile, Mazars reported that women make up 35 per cent of its global leadership team and 43 per cent of its governance bodies overall, though it recognizes the need to further balance female representation in its Group Executive Board alone.

It has also partnered, at the group level, with the Observatory for Gender Balance to address gender diversity in its company.

Focusing on gender diversity in the workplace is an essential for any workplace in 2023. It doesn’t stop there – it also feeds into working on wider diversity in the company.

All progress is good, but the facts are sobering: the World Economic Forum (WEF) found that at the current rate of progress, it will take 132 years to close the gender pay gap.

Source: Euro News Agency

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