Counselling sessions and one-on-one assistance will be provided to victims of domestic and sexual abuse in Bahrain, with the launch of a crisis management centre.

Women Crisis Care International (WCCI) will conduct its first orientation session for 60 nurses tomorrow in co-ordination with one of Bahrain’s public hospitals, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

The medics will undergo training to support victims and to liaise between them and volunteers from the centre.  

It coincides with the 20th anniversary of a major United Nations (UN) conference that took place in September 1995, which provided a roadmap for advancing the role of women worldwide.

WCCI was founded by American national Mary-Justine Todd, who is a certified New York State rape crisis counsellor and has more than eight years of international and domestic programming experience.

“Violence against women or family violence is nothing unique to Bahrain – it is a global phenomenon,” Todd, who is also the centre’s director, told the GDN.

“One in every three women faces abuse or violence in their life (according to World Health Organisation statistics), which is true to Bahrain as well.

“Our aim is to support such women with crisis intervention and provide them care and to assist them in solving their problems, as they wish.”
 
Around 100 volunteers will be trained as responders to help women subjected to domestic or sexual violence as part of the centre’s Victim Advocacy Programme.

“When a woman is the victim of domestic or sexual violence, it is not uncommon that she will never go for long-term help,” explained Ms Todd.

“There is a window of opportunity we have to reach these women, when they are at the hospitals, so that’s where the crisis counsellors go.

“We aim to have around 100 such responders who will be available on call all the time to support hospitals in crisis management for women.

“We are glad that we are starting off with a leading public hospital in Bahrain and soon establishing links with major private hospitals as well.

“WCCI will make and maintain monthly on-call lists of responders which will be provided to the hospitals’ emergency rooms, who will be notified when they receive a victim of sexual or domestic abuse.

“The responder will arrive at the hospital in not less than 45 minutes and she will stay with the victim providing her with emotional support and information about help for the future.”

However, she stressed the role of the responder was not to investigate allegations of abuse.

“The responder acts more like a bridge, to support the victim at the time of crisis and to make her feel better that there is someone to turn to when in crisis,” she said.

“For someone in such a crisis, the whole hospital process can be a bit overwhelming, including the medics and police doing their job, which they might find insensitive.

“This makes them feel nobody cares and it is at this point that the responder plays his or her role.

“We also support survivors with services which they will often need like ongoing counselling or practical things like changing the locks on their home or sorting out childcare.”  

Todd started working on the project two years ago when she came to Bahrain with her husband Dr Mohammed El Sayed, who is a faculty member at Bahrain University.

“Bahrain has some very strong and progressive laws protecting women, which perhaps need to be given more public awareness,” she added.  

The launch of the centre coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

It resulted in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which is described by UN Women as “the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights”.

A total of 17,000 participants and 30,000 activists took part in that event and UN Women is now in the midst of a Beijing+20 campaign, which culminates in September, and promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment two decades after the conference in Beijing took place.

The GDN is an official partner of the Beijing+20 campaign. - TradeArabia News Service