By Shauna Jemmott
MINISTER of Social Protection, Volda Lawrence, has once again registered the government’s commitment to improve the lives of children and women and has undertaken to use a specialist report on their status to do so. Minister Lawrence Wednesday received the Guyana Situation Analysis (SitAn) of Children and Women, at Herdmanston Lodge, Georgetown. She said the government will invest in capacity building for the support of vulnerable children and women and honour the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to empower Guyana’s children and women.
“Our sustainable development goals call for the empowerment of our children and women and we will invest our efforts and resources to engage in capacity- building for the prevention of violence and support for our vulnerable children and women.
“We need to re-examine our family structure and values. We have to reinforce our training and knowledge base – our curriculum – and look at alternative ways of dealing with our children who are in conflict with the law.”
She said the SitAn proposes that government takes into account the social norms and social and cultural practices of its people, and assured that government will use the document for the elimination of violations against Guyana’s children and women.
The SitAn document presents relevant statistical data to highlight the prevailing social issues affecting women and children, and make recommendations for addressing such issues.
The minister told the gathering that of all the issues underlined, poverty is the “prime enemy.”
She said the document presents a “comprehensive assessment of the struggles that women and children face and sets the way forward for the development and implementation of strategic development plans and programmes with the vision of advancing the rights of Guyanese children and women – particularly the most vulnerable and their families – within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals.”
With its focus being on possible causes of problems along with an assessment of the data, and the bottlenecks and barriers, the minister said the SitAn is already being used as a guide for crafting strategies and enhancing the well-being of children and women.
She said its recommendations will also be considered in the ministry’s recommendations for considerations in government’s 2017 budget presentation.
“The document portrays the Guyanese situation from the perspective of women and children and adopts a life-cycle and equity-based approach… There is connectivity to the SDGs, the goals that need to be vigorously pursued to enable Guyana to achieve sustainable social and economic development.”
Despite efforts to address the problem, violence against women and children still occurs at alarming rates in some communities with regular reports presented in the daily media. Minister Lawrence acknowledged that such social ills contribute to loss of human resource and expertise essential for development.
She said however, the new document is one that gives government a clearer understanding of the situation and as a result, government can act with more precision.
“We have an overall, vivid picture of the situation as it is presented in each category. With this information and the demographics outlined therein, we have directives that can give us and guide us to those areas that need to be emphasised in order to make significant inroads,” Minister Lawrence said.