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Plenary, 09 Nov 2006

09 Nov 2006 · S2 · Plenary

Item of business

Violence Against Women

Baird, Shiona Green North East Scotland Watch on SPTV

As the motion highlights, we have a great history of women's rights activism in Scotland. This week, I visited the Eighteen and Under centre in Dundee, which started as the Young Women's Project but which in the past couple of years has widened its remit. However, it still tackles explicitly gender-based violence and other forms of abuse. The centre offers one-to-one support for young people who have been abused, including counselling and support during criminal proceedings and trials.

That project is part of the violence is preventable—VIP—network. We surely all agree that prevention is better than cure. The network, which currently has participants ranging from three to 102 years, aims to increase people's awareness of personal safety, violence prevention, abuse, gender inequality in relationships and domestic abuse. Crucially, in a pilot project in Dundee that is supported by Dundee City Council, project leaders go into schools to deliver programmes that are designed for children from primary 1 through to sixth year in secondary school. The programmes encourage children to think about their feelings and about alternatives to violence in resolving conflict. Equally important, a VIP project in Dundee works with senior citizens, mostly women. Elderly people who move into care homes or who become less physically and mentally able members of the community need extra support and information to protect them. Violence against and abuse of older women are too often overlooked and unreported.

The VIP programme needs to be rolled out across Scotland. As in previous years, I ask the minister whether he is content with the roll-out of the complementary zero tolerance campaign. Are schools getting the opportunity to address the culture of violence that prevails in our society and which both those programmes address so well?

The Executive does good work in supporting the women's aid groups in my region in Dundee, Angus, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. However, it is a shame that the Executive's international development fund does not fund overseas projects to tackle violence against women. Amnesty International states:

"Violence against women in the family has been recognized as a leading cause of death and suffering around the world."

As others have said, it is important to see violence against women in an international context. As individuals, organisations and a nation, we have links and contacts with people throughout the world and therefore the opportunity to influence and be influenced by them. I bring to the Parliament's attention the work of RAWA—the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan—which was started way back in 1977 in Kabul. It is an independent organisation of Afghan women that fights for human rights and social justice in Afghanistan. RAWA, which is the oldest political and social organisation of Afghan women, struggles for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights.

Amnesty International states that, in Afghanistan, the international community's interventions and the Afghan Government

"have proved unable to protect women."

Despite the 28 per cent representation of women in the Afghan Parliament, women and girls in Afghanistan are threatened with violence in every aspect of their lives, in public and in private, in the community and in the family. A survey conducted by the United Nations Development Fund for Women revealed that 65 per cent of the 50,000 widows in Kabul see suicide as the only option to get rid of their miseries and desolation. Forced and underage marriage, when women and girls are given in marriage, occurs as a means of dispute resolution in informal justice mechanisms. Prosecutions for violence against women and protection for women who are at an acute risk of violence are virtually absent. In certain regions of Afghanistan, women who are accused of adultery are routinely detained, as are those who attempt to assert their right, under Afghan law and international standards, to marry a spouse of their choice.

RAWA believes that

"freedom and democracy can't be donated; it is the duty of the people of a country to fight and achieve these values."

As we continue our work in Scotland, we must also use our international contacts to support and help activists in all countries to combat violence against women.

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Plenary, 09 Nov 2006

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