Violence against Women and Girls in the Caribbean: An Intervention and Lessons Learned from Jamaica

Violence against women is one of the major development problems facing the Caribbean today. The problem has been prevalent in the region over the years but has intensified over the recent decades. This often takes many forms but the most prevalent are domestic violence and battering but violence is now increasingly directed against women through sexual harassment in the work place, rape, child abuse including incest, buggery and murder. Ffolkes (1997), for instance, that wife beating and rape of married women are identified as the most common forms of domestic violence among the older women whereas incest and rape are more common among young women. There are many organizations addressing the issue of violence against women in the Caribbean. This paper seeks to provide an overview of the Inter-agency campaign implemented by seven women's organizations with support from the International community in the Caribbean. The Jamaican inter-agency campaign on violence against women and girls implemented in 1998 was one of the most visible responses to the gender-based violence in the Caribbean region. The campaign was initiated and implemented through collaboration with several International donor agencies and local NGOs. The project was developed as a result of an initiative by the UNDP and the government of Jamaica (PIOJ) to facilitate a coordinated program on violence against women. The program was meant to bring together all the NGOs working on this issue, with each agency focusing on the area for which it had a comparative advantage.