Agencies better trained to handle cases of domestic and sexual violence |10 August 2019

A souvenir photograph after the certificate presentation

The five-day Gender Based Violence (GBV) workshop, organised jointly by the US embassy with the Ministry of Family Affairs and the U.S. Defence Institute of Medical Operations (DIMO) officially came to an end yesterday with a brief closing ceremony and the presentation of certificates to participants.

The Phase II workshop which was being held at Avani Seychelles, Barbarons, follows on from the first one which was held in July 2018 with the objective to help Seychelles handle the growing GBV related issues in the country and ultimately develop and complete a National Plan on women, peace and security for Seychelles in association with the United Nations (UN) resolution 1325.

However, the Phase II workshop aimed to provide participants with training on how to better coordinate across different actions between the different agencies dealing with domestic violence and sexual assault cases.

Over the course of the five training days, the American trainers, led by Dr Mathew Dolan from DIMO, emphasised the importance of developing a checklist, designing a consistent response and careful monitoring to make sure victims receive high quality care.

Dr Dolan explained that the training content involves walking the participants through the whole procedures when dealing with cases of domestic and sexual violence and the importance of inter-agency cooperation for a better victim experience.

“The ministry put together very capable and diverse team of stakeholders from a variety of different areas including the Ministry of Family Affairs themselves, the Seychelles Police Force, the health sector, education and social work as well as non-governmental organisations,” Dr Dolan said.

“The course this year deals with inter-agency coordination and with developing a victim-centred process and it focuses on domestic violence and sexual violence. So we have two days dealing with sexual violence and a lot of it is built around a tracer where we take a hypothetical patient or victim and we walk them through the process from the instance where they call the police, to the point the police arrive on scene and what happens there, procedures that are handled by the call centre, issues associated with gathering evidence in the story, police actions,” he stated.

Participants were also trained to deal with victims of violence in the health system, including the procedures to administer both the medical exam and the exam directed towards obtaining evidence for criminal prosecution where it is necessary and appropriate, the handling of evidence.

As for social workers, they were briefed on sheltering and safety of the victim after the event.

“Then through issues dealing with the perpetrators themselves and the role of prosecution in risk-stratifying to understand can they be released on bail or are they too dangerous? Or do they need rehabilitation and then working through a variety of programmes. A lot of the work, we went through the best practices out there and then the different inter-agencies sat down to discuss arrangements pertaining to how to put together programmes and how they would staff them, monitoring and evaluation effectively. We deal with prevention of domestic and sexual violence in schools and a variety of other settings, building the resiliency of women to make them less susceptible and support systems. The week was really geared toward helping agencies work better together for an improved victim experience,” Dr Dolan stated.

During the closing ceremony, principal secretary for Family Affairs, Marie-Josée Bonne, commended the DIMO delegation for the skills and knowledge imparted to participants to enhance their capabilities in both prevention and their response to violence, over the course of the five days.

“As we have come to learn during the course of the week through presentations from our local speakers, Seychelles has seen an unprecedented rise in levels of sexual violence against both men and women but more so, against minors. We have been presented with alarming data on sexual assaults for 2019 and we have come to understand how the various types of domestic violence being manifested in Seychelles is being reinforced in the socio-cultural norms that can perpetuate and even accentuate domestic violence,” she noted.

PS Bonne also urged all participants to make the most of what they have learned and to work together to fight to prevent, mitigate and put an end to sexual and gender violence.

“It is imperative that we advocate for the rights of all individuals, that we continue raising awareness on GBV, that we initiate more realistic programmes with targeted approaches,” she added.

The ceremony concluded with the presentation of certificates to the 40 plus participants as well as the presentation of tokens of appreciation to the DIMO delegates who facilitated the training workshop.

The Ministry of Family Affairs intends to develop an inter-agency manual and small preliminary sessions to discuss this manual, the roles of the various agencies, guidelines, standard operating procedures and pathways through the system was also held during the training workshop.

The ministry will be organising inter-agency meetings to finalise the manual for implementation.