News Releases

Statement from The Institute for Gender and Development Studies | The killing of women must stop!

For Release Upon Receipt - January 10, 2020

St. Augustine


The Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS), The University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, calls attention to and condemns the continued killing of women by men. Nine days into the new decade and four women have been killed brutally by male suspects believed to be known to them. News reports suggest persistent cases of Intimate Partner Violence. The Institute reminds the population that a 2018 study found that one in three women in Trinidad and Tobago reported experiencing physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime, and that 7% reported experiencing such violence in a 12-month period. These numbers suggest that the problem of male violence against women is widespread, affecting more than 10,000 women every year.

The Institute continues to be astounded at the absence of a clear and cohesive state strategy to prevent such violence, which is often committed in retaliation to a woman’s decision to leave a dysfunctional relationship. It calls relevant state authorities to incorporate civil society and corporate partners committed to preventing and responding to male violence against women.

These murders are a clear expression of gender socialisation that produces widespread normalisation of male violence and a long-standing problem of premeditated and sustained domestic terrorism against women. We call on state authorities to show that preventing the killing of women is a national priority by implementing effective prevention and response strategies with immediate effect, rather than reasserting promises to “investigate” or uttering euphemistic platitudes that identify the problem as general family violence, mental illness, or poor choices by women.

 

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About The UWI

For more than 70 years The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has provided service and leadership to the Caribbean region and wider world. The UWI evolved from a university college of London in Jamaica with 33 medical students in 1948 to an internationally respected, regional university with near 50,000 students across five campuses: Cave Hill in Barbados; Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda; Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago; and an Open Campus. Times Higher Education has ranked The UWI among the top 1,258 universities in world for 2019, and the 40 best universities in its Latin America Rankings for 2018 and 2019. The UWI is the only Caribbean-based university to make the prestigious lists.

As part of its robust globalization agenda, The UWI has established partnering centres with universities in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa including the State University of New York (SUNY)-UWI Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development; the Canada-Caribbean Studies Institute with Brock University; the Strategic Alliance for Hemispheric Development with Universidad de los Andes (UNIANDES); The UWI-China Institute of Information Technology, the University of Lagos (UNILAG)-UWI Institute of African and Diaspora Studies and the Institute for Global African Affairs with the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The UWI offers over 800 certificate, diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Social Sciences and Sport. As the region’s premier research academy, The UWI’s foremost objective is driving the growth and development of the regional economy. For more, visit www.uwi.edu.

 

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of “The”)

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