16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence begins tomorrow, but the National Women's Commission launched it a day early, beginning with a march through downtown Belize today. The Albert area's streets were a sea of orange as different organizations marched to bring awareness. After it ended, we spoke with the president of the NWC, who said they planned it for today so that the students could participate in this important public dialogue.
Thea Garcia Ramirez, President, National Women's Commission
"16 days runs from the 25th of November to the 10th of December. But we thought that we would want to start today because so we could have the participation of the schools. We're trying to reach that demographic, teenagers, young people. That's where the cycle of violence starts. We have a lot of violence in the dating process where especially young men. And I'm saying especially because increasingly you have more reports of men being the victims and women being the perpetrators."
"So we have a very unending cycle of violence. And so we are trying to address it earlier on because prevention is the best way to eradicate at this point. So we're trying to involve the schools. We had a number of schools and primary schools took out their children to see what was happening today. And so we really wanted to start today to set the tone and tomorrow and all the way up to the 10th. We have a calendar countrywide with our gender based committees at the district level ensuring that we have ample opportunity to advocate, educate and just raise awareness of the problem that is gender based violence."
