–Minister Persaud tells human rights council  

MINISTER of Human Services and Social Security, Dr. Vindhya Persaud, on Tuesday morning, presented at the 50th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC50), where she said that partnerships with women and girls were necessary to eliminate Gender-Based Violence (GBV).

Minister Persaud stated, during her presentation, that the Government of Guyana’s approach to eliminating gender-based violence was creative and diverse, and it takes time to change ingrained ways of thinking.
“We recognise that partnership with women and girls is indispensable in this process,” she said.

Minister Persaud said that women and girls were disproportionately affected by gender-based violence, which impedes their empowerment and the achievement of gender equality.
“The Government of Guyana’s innovative programmes are geared towards ensuring that women and girls have significant roles in the development of effective responses to gender-based violence through the creation of enabling environments,” she related.

The Human Services Minister said that the efficacy of any measure geared towards preventing and eliminating gender-based violence could be assessed by how comprehensively it addressed the problem.
She explained that women and girls who were victims of gender-based violence were in the best position to ventilate their experience of violence fully, providing a holistic picture of its impacts and putting forward essential insights into the range of issues to be addressed by policymakers if gender-based violence was to be effectively countered.

“In Guyana, many of the initiatives that my government has developed to tackle gender-based violence have stemmed from ideas and proposals put forward by women and girls themselves, and a significant proportion of these are implemented primarily by women, notably the 914 24-hour hotline, free legal services, survivor advocacy, and other intervention programmes,” Minister Persaud said.

Minister Persaud related that she spearheaded the legislative review of the domestic violence act, was the chair of the National Sexual Offences Task Force, and led the development of economic empowerment programmes and policies to combat gender inequality.

The 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council started on June 13, 2022, and will run until July 8, 2022.
According to the Universal Rights Group, the Human Rights Council is the leading intergovernmental body within the United Nations (UN) system responsible for promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all and for addressing human rights violations, including gross and systematic violations.

The Council was created on March 15, 2006, by UN General Assembly (GA) resolution 60/251, which decided to establish the Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, in replacement of the Commission on Human Rights.
The Council, which comprises 47 members allocated by geographic region, meets for three regular sessions per year in March, June, and September for 10 weeks or more.