Kerrie Flood: A cautious welcome for anti-violence strategy

A commitment to ending violence against women and girls that cannot come soon enough, this should have been a moment of unbridled celebration – but it was bittersweet news after we learned of the murder of another woman in Northern Ireland.

A sobering reminder of how much this means to women.

After years of campaigning, with more than 26,000 signatures on a Women’s Aid Petition across Northern Ireland in 2021, we have finally done it.

We consulted heavily to ensure that women’s voices were central, including brave women from County Fermanagh.

Now, we are finally aligned with other jurisdictions and can see a real shift into a gendered analysis of need and risk.

The Executive Office’s ‘Ending Violence Against Women and Girls’ (EVAWG) sets out a vision of a “changed society where women and girls are free from all forms of gender-based violence, abuse and harm including the attitudes, systems and structural inequalities that cause them”.

The power of this sentence alone is a relief, following years of gender-neutral approaches to Domestic and Sexual Violence.

Strategies which – in my view – were misguided in their understanding of equality.

Equality is achieved through equity. That means targeting our efforts where they are needed, in the way they are needed.

‘One for everyone in the audience’ only serves to further entrench pre-existing inequalities.

Any of you who have read my previous columns will know I am not afraid to speak out when I see failings in our Government and across Departments.

Indeed, for a year in this very newspaper, I have called for specific actions from across our society to address this very issue.

However, I think it is important to acknowledge when a Department has listened to need, consulted well with those most impacted, backed up a strategic framework with a delivery plan, and conducted robust Equality Impact Assessments.

That is absolutely the case for the Executive Office in the EVAWG strategy.

More than that, ending violence against women and girls appears as a priority action in the Draft Programme for Government, and for the first time in a long time, I have hope that we can make real change and that our daughters can be safer than we are.

The research framework behind the strategy provides robust evidence led by Dr. Siobhan McAlister, Prof. Dirk Schubotz and Dr. Michelle Templeton, from Queen’s University, Belfast, and Dr. Gail Neill at Ulster University.

It details our young women’s experiences of violence against women and girls (VAWG), including that more than one-third (37 per cent) of survey respondents (aged 12-17 years) reported having experienced one form of violence, and another 36 per cent had experienced more than one.

This suggests experiences of violence are widespread among girls/young women.

The action plan provides a tangible road map within which we all have responsibility.

A multi-layered approach to the pillars of Prevention, Protection and Provision; the Justice System and Working Better Together specifically lays out the need for community-led reviews of the needs of women and girls facing additional risk of VAWG, and barriers to accessing services.

Rural women are specifically named. In reading the action plan, it appears there could be a very real role at a local level for Fermanagh and Omagh District Council in implementing the strategy and meeting the unique needs of rural women and girls locally.

It is also important to note the need for initiatives to create attitudinal and behavioural change in men and boys, as well as gap analysis of the need for general and specialist services to inform further policy development and service delivery.

I can conduct a quick gap analysis in Fermanagh right now, and say clearly that Fermanagh Women’s Aid receives no core Government funding – what Government funding we do receive has largely remained unchanged for many years, and accounts for less than 40 per cent of the resources required for the minimum service to function.

Instead, we are reliant on grant-making bodies and donations.

There is huge scope for the development of services and to meet the specific needs of women and girls here in Fermanagh if our implementation plan is backed with multi-year budgets and an investment plan.

At a time when four out of five victims of sexual offences recorded by the PSNI in 2022/23 were female, where 75 per cent of girls experience street harassment at least once in their lifetime, and where half of girls aged 16 have received an unwanted intimate photo, it is positive that the Northern Ireland Executive is clearly responding to this crisis in a thoughtful and nuanced way.

I am hopeful, but I am not reckless. I know there will always be more work to do, and that action plans require investment.

Amid positive news for women and girls in Northern Ireland, we must not forget that we live in the second-most dangerous place in Western Europe to be a woman.

For many women, it comes too late. Since 2020, 23 women have been murdered in Northern Ireland at the hands of a man, or where a man is the lead suspect.

Three women have been murdered in the past four weeks alone.

This is the real reason why this moment means so much to those of us working across the women’s sector.

This is the real cost of violence against women and girls. We must honour and remember them each day in our efforts to drive forward change.

The following are the names of women murdered in Norther Ireland since the beginning of Lockdown (in March, 2020) when Women's Aid first started asking for a strategy, one year before the petition.

Elizabeth Dobbin (82), Natasha Melendez (32), Emma Jane McParland (39), Patrycja Wyrebek (20), Katie Simpson (21), Susan Baird (60), Karen McClean (50), Stacey Knell (30), Ludmila Poletelova (61), Kathleen ‘Katie’ Brankin (37), Katrina Rainey (53), Caoimhe Morgan (30), Alyson Nelson (64), Margaret Una Noone (77), Hollie Thomson (28), Natalie McNally (32), Alesia Nazarova (37), Chloe Mitchell (21), Kathryn 'Kat' Parton (34), Patricia 'Patsy' Aust (80), Sophie Watson (57), Montserrat Elias (65) and Rachelle Simpson (43).

I am holding them, their families, friends and all who loved them in my thoughts.

Now that we have a cross-departmental strategy, I look forward to each Department and to our own local Council working to keep women and girls safe.

Kerrie Flood is Interim Chief Executive at Fermanagh Women’s Aid.