The Ending Violence Against Women & Girls Strategy
In late September, The Executive Office launched the first ever Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy in the history of Northern Ireland. This launch represents an important step, not just in bringing us in line with other jurisdictions on these islands, but in recognising what the women’s movement has long argued; that prevention is the key to finding our way out of the maze we are in. Within a few weeks of the launch of the Strategy, several more women had been murdered in Northern Ireland, in a year that has been particularly bad, even by our standards. Even worse, we know this is the very tip of the pyramid of violence, the numbers harmed in this time are impossible to count.
There had been a number of Domestic and Sexual Abuse Strategies before this (and another 7 year Strategy was approved around the same time) but these are fundamentally different in intention and in content. For starters, they are gender neutral to serve all survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, but also they are reactive rather than preventative in focus – they work towards providing the vital services that are needed, but they do not have an upstream focus, as this Strategy does.
Instead, this Strategy was moulded around the pillars of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention. Those pillars – Prevention, Protection, Prosecution and co-ordinated Policies – became the guiding principles and provide a useful snapshot of the outcomes expected. Around 50% of the agreed actions focus on prevention, and everyone is invited to get involved.
Prevention is particularly important because we need to understand the causes of VAWG, the beliefs that motivate it, and to include all manifestations of VAWG, rather than the focusing only on the very worst violence, such as femicide. The goal is to prevent biased beliefs from developing into sexist behaviours and from escalating into violence in the first place and to put in place interventions that can identify these issues before someone is harmed, while the justice system is improved and services made more widely available, at the same time, to make sure that those who do become victims are treated properly, cared for, and that justice can be done.
For the first funded period, some organisations will be funded to carry out work across Northern Ireland, and other pots of funding will be available, administered locally by Councils, for grassroots groups and more place-focused groups to carry out prevention work, such as education and awareness programmes, in their local area. Built into this is an active encouragement for organisations to share workloads an expertise, particularly when there are organisations with VAWG expertise who can help to “skill up” smaller grassroots groups. It is an attempt to live up to the Strategy’s slogan; “there is something everyone can do”.
WRDA was part of the co-design group that contributed to the Strategy, our work in researching VAWG, especially our 2022 research into the scope, scale and prevalence of VAWG was included in the research considered by the Strategy team. We also hope to be involved in the work that comes out of the Strategy itself. But involvement in strategies and co-design groups does not necessarily guarantee that we are confident about the final product. This Strategy is different; it holds really transformational power and can be a key to involving communities all across NI in the significant change we need to make.
It is ambitious, and it is not going to be quick or particularly easy to achieve, but it can be done if we all pull in the same direction.
Written by Elaine Crory and Meg Hoyt
