Hansard

Today, we mark the 30th international day for the elimination of violence against women. Despite some progress having been made, it is clear that gender-based violence is still the lived reality for too many women across the world.

We see that in the Covid-19 pandemic, humanitarian crises, conflicts and climate disasters, which are all causing an increasing threat of violence to women and girls, so I welcome the UN’s UNiTE to end violence against women campaign and the 16 days of activism, which are focused on preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls around the world. I welcome the Scottish Government’s motion that highlights the need for the Parliament to renew its shared ambition to tackle gender-based violence.

However, there is clearly still more work to be done to make that ambition a reality. Gender-based violence, whether it is domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault, stalking or harassment, remains deeply rooted in our society. Recent figures, which were published in September, found that there were more than 33,000 charges of domestic abuse in Scotland last year. That was the highest number of charges reported since 2015 and represents an almost 10 per cent increase in one year. There were also more than 1,000 stalking charges last year. Yet those figures represent only instances of gender-based violence that were reported and where charges were brought. The truth is that too much of the gender-based violence that is suffered by women and girls in Scotland goes unreported.

Therefore, it is clear that there is more that we must do in Scotland and that there are policy changes that we could make now. We must teach our young people and children to respect each other’s bodily autonomy. Girls should not be expected to internalise misogyny, and boys should not grow up with a sense of entitlement over others. In our public services, we must look to increase awareness of gender-based violence among staff and strengthen training for them to support women and girls. We must address the concerns that women and girls have for their safety, by carrying out safety audits of public spaces to ensure that they are well lit, welcoming and accessible.

We also have to acknowledge the role of the police in women’s safety. The motion refers to the murder of Sarah Everard, who was murdered not just by a man, but a man who was a serving police officer. Women and girls are told to turn to the police in times of crisis, but Sarah Everard’s murder has damaged trust in the police as an institution. Statistics show that Sarah’s murderer is not an exception, but a symptom of the institutional sexism that still exists within the police. At least 15 serving or former UK police officers have killed women since 2009. More than 40 police officers and staff in Police Scotland are being prosecuted over offences that include sex crime, assaults and domestic abuse. Rape Crisis Scotland published a damning report of the experiences of survivors of rape and sexual assault, which exposed the systemic sexism that still exists in Police Scotland’s ranks.

That is why it was so concerning that Police Scotland’s international development and innovation unit had been undertaking work with the Sri Lankan police, including how to tackle gender-based violence. Given Police Scotland’s poor record, how could anyone argue that that unit was best placed to promote good practice internationally? In spite of its supposed aims, the unit’s activities in Sri Lanka failed to change the attitude and culture of gender-based violence that is rife in the country. A Sri Lankan police spokesperson was recently quoted as confirming that the force would not take cases of intimate partner violence to court, so it is no surprise that campaigners feared that Police Scotland’s work was providing political cover and legitimacy for the human rights violations, including gender-based violence, that occur in Sri Lanka.

The chief constable has now made a welcome announcement that there will be no further deployment of Police Scotland officers to Sri Lanka during the remainder of the agreed period, which ends in March 2022, and that Police Scotland will not seek to renew its engagement to support policing in Sri Lanka when the current period ends. That is a victory for campaigners, who will write to the chief constable in the coming days to seek a written confirmation of that decision, and I hope that they are provided with that.

However, members should note that the U-turn comes in spite of the inaction of the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans. If the Scottish Government had wanted to demonstrate its willingness to take all necessary steps to tackle gender-based violence, the justice secretary should have supported the calls for Police Scotland’s contract with the Sri Lankan police to be terminated and not renewed. There is no point in a justice secretary who does not stand up for human rights, yet that is exactly what we have in Keith Brown.

I conclude by acknowledging that all of us in the Parliament want to tackle gender-based violence and that it is the responsibility of us all to push the Government to do more to help achieve that. We must educate our children and young people if we are to address deep-rooted attitudes and behaviours, we must improve the support that is offered to women and girls by our public services and we must make our public spaces safe for women and girls. It would be a mark of the failure of all of us in the Parliament if people looking back in 30 years’ time concluded that we had said all the right things but failed to deliver the action that was needed to eliminate violence against women and girls.