Silent Witness March

Published 29th October 2007, 3:34pm

The HRC joined with an increasing number of individuals and other groups from civil society, including The Cayman Islands Crisis Centre and The Women’s Resource Centre in supporting the Business and Professional Women’s Club and the Young Business and Professional Women’s Club in the 2007 Silent Witness March. The Silent Witness March seeks to draw attention to the human rights abuses associated with violence against women and domestic violence.

Director of WRC and HRC Member, Tammy Ebanks Bishop, delivered the keynote remarks. She stated,

• “Violence against women is viewed by many as the most pervasive yet least recognizedhuman rights abuse in the world. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), as many as one in every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in some other way - most often by someone she knows, including by her husband or another male family member; one woman in four has been abused during pregnancy. In the Cayman Islands, we can not ignore the unfortunate fact that violence against women occurs in every community on all three of our islands.”

Participants of the Silent Witness March hold red silhouettes that represent the women who have been killed in the Cayman Islands and around the world as a result of domestic violence. Mrs. Ebanks Bishop further stated,

• “While each one of these red figures we are holding represents a separate tragedy that we mourn, we must expand our view to see that they represent even more than the women who died as a result of domestic violence. They represent the children who have had to witness domestic violence as a part of their daily lives; children who are afraid of going home or are often too afraid to sleep. Consequently, these children are often too tired to learn or cause disruptions in school, or worse they begin to participate in juvenile delinquent behaviours and work their way through the criminal justice system as a result of their unhealthy home life.”

What began as a determination to remember 26 women, whose lives had been lost in 1990 as a result of domestic violence, has evolved into an international initiative. The goal of this initiative is to promote peace, healing and responsibility in adult relationships in order to eliminate domestic mistreatment by 2010.

The HRC endorses this goal and will continue to promote the message that violence against women and domestic abuse is indeed a violation of human rights. The HRC is a community stakeholder that is willing to provide any assistance and support that it can to ensure that domestic abuse in the Cayman Islands becomes a thing of the past.

For further information contact: Human Rights Committee