By Patricia Scotland
As we head towards the end of the year, many of us will soon be surrounded by our family and friends sitting around dinner tables as we celebrate the festive season. Looking around the table and reflecting on the fact that, on average, every third woman you see will have experienced sexual or physical abuse at some point in their lives.
*Patricia ScotlandViolence
against women and girls is not only one of the most pervasive human rights
violations, but it also has significant economic costs. And this is proven, the
global economy loses $1.5tn every year due to the consequences of violence
against women, ranging from money spent in hospitals or on law enforcement
through to the income lost when victims miss work.
Experience
shows us that these alarming figures tend to rise during crises. We recently
witnessed an up to 300 per cent increase in domestic violence during the
pandemic. Encouragingly, many governments and organisations took robust
measures to stem the rising tide of violence. But as the pandemic recedes, the
attention towards ending violence is fading with it. We are sleepwalking back
into our old ways and failed practices, which the pandemic has demonstrated as
ineffective, exposing too many women to men’s violence.
We know
violence can be prevented. Studies show that investing in preventive solutions
generates multiple returns, yet the continuing economic cost of violence
demonstrates that most of our resources go towards intervening after the abuse
has happened rather than preventing it from occurring in the first place. This
is a much more costly approach, particularly at a time when global growth is
slowing sharply, which is escalating poverty and hurting public spending on
social services. If we resort to business as usual, the cascading effects will
expose more women to violence while shrinking revenues will hinder the capacity
of social services to adequately support victims.
This
week, as we observe the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence
campaign, we have an opportunity to commit to a fundamental shift, one that
puts the prevention of violence and the inequalities that enable it, at the
core of our collective efforts. Doing so is both a moral imperative and smart
economics. Countries could use the resources saved through prevention to invest
in achieving greater gender equality and make a bold step forward to achieving
their commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals.
In
the Commonwealth, we are working with our 56 member countries to accelerate
efforts towards addressing violence against women and girls with a focus on
prevention. In particular, we developed a pioneering tool that makes a strong
economic case for addressing violence by measuring how a country loses when it
does not act to prevent it. The tool helps countries measure the full extent of
the issue, analyse the data and provide cost-effective solutions to improve the
overall response to ending violence.
Recently our work in Seychelles revealed for
the first time that the country loses 4.6 per cent of its gross domestic
product to violence against women and girls. It further outlined system-wide
responses to tackle violence, including through policies to safeguard victims,
improve women’s financial independence and promote non-judgemental frontline
services. We have since been supporting Seychelles in implementing multi-agency
measures, including a new domestic violence act, designed to prevent and
respond to violence.
While violence in itself is enough reason to
act, knowing the accompanying economic cost offers a powerful argument to
propel governments, businesses and individuals into further action. It
demonstrates that when an act of violence occurs, we all lose, and emphasises
that ending it is in everyone’s interest. We urge countries to consider
measuring the economic cost of violence as an annual exercise to evaluate the efficacy
of their action and build on the findings to strengthen their response towards
eliminating this violation.
We also need to remember that this is men’s
violence, and we need to involve them in the prevention and intervention
efforts as active allies. In this regard, we are complementing our policy
response with steadfast advocacy. Armed with an array of easy-to-use advocacy
resources, our Commonwealth says ‘No More’ campaign takes a culturally
sensitive, bottom-up approach towards engaging individuals, communities and
businesses in raising awareness against gender-based violence, involving
grassroots leaders to counter harmful social norms and training bystanders to
effectively intervene.
Therefore, any intervention will be in vain if
it is not backed up by decisive action from everyone, starting from making our
homes safe, to our communities, to our workplaces and to our countries. Now is
not a time to sideline this issue. Now, more than ever, is a time for a smart,
targeted global response to violence against women and girls that puts out the
wildfire of violence and sows the seeds of lasting peace for all. And if not
now, when?
*Patricia
Scotland is the Commonwealth Secretary-General
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