What are the possible reasons for the continued rise in GBV incidents despite all the awareness campaigns devoted to this scourge in Africa
Answers
Gender-Based Violence During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mini-Review
Shalini Mittal1 and Tushar Singh2*
1Amity Institute of Behavioural and Allied Sciences, Amity University, Lucknow, India
2Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India
Purpose: Quarantine is necessary to reduce the community spread of the Coronavirus disease, but it also has serious psychological and socially disruptive consequences. This is known as the quarantine paradox that also includes a surge in the cases of gender-based violence. However, there exists a clear gap of rigorous literature exploring the issue. Hence, the current paper attempts to understand gender-based violence as an aspect of the COVID-19 lockdown. It reviews the pattern of rise in gender violence cases and the resultant psychological and social issues and attempts to create awareness by initiating a discourse urging for change in the response towards the victims of gender-based violence. The paper further attempts to suggest measures to mitigate the issues arising out of gender violence during quarantine.
Method: The current paper reviews the literature on the rise of gender-based violence in the times of current and past pandemics. The paper also reviews the published reports in scientific as well as mass media literatures focusing on the rise of gender-based violence during the imposed lockdown, its consequences, and the measures taken by the governments to tackle the issue.
Results: The present review reveals that similar to the previous pandemics and epidemics, there has been an alarming rise in the incidents of gender-based violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present review further reveals various other risk factors that have been found attributive to the surge of gender-based violence such as economic insecurity and alcohol consumption. The results of the review indicate that despite its global prevalence, gender-based violence has been one of the most neglected outcomes of pandemics. Moreover, the legislatures and services available for such victims are often inadequate and, thus, worsening their situation.
Conclusion: Pandemic situations have been found to be associated with advancements in the medical field. However, a part and parcel of this situation is the age-old practice of quarantine that has several negative outcomes. This also includes a surge in gender-based violence that raises serious concerns about the safety of women. As the legislatures provided and measures taken by the governments are falling short in dealing with the issue, a number of non-government organizations are stepping up to provide necessary services to these victims.
Pandemic and Gender-Based Violence
Quarantine has been an effective measure of controlling infection since the 14th century. The medieval societies were able to establish a link between the emergence of symptoms and the duration of time. The origin of the term is rooted in the health practice related to plague back in 1377 AD when ships were isolated for 30 days and land travelers for 40 days in the sea port of Ragusa (1). However, the earliest record of quarantine can be traced back to 532 AD (2). Since then, the practice of quarantine has been utilized to reduce the spread of contagious diseases. With the declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic, there is a mounting pressure on the governments to take measures to reduce the community spread of the disease. Hence, in the absence of a vaccine or effective treatment, going into quarantine for varying periods of time is being adopted as an option by most countries. This has led to a drastic alteration in the day-to-day lifestyle of the individuals. Most of the work is being done from home, and efforts are being made to maintain social distance. These measures are crucial to the protection of healthcare systems. However, just like one coin has two sides, the positive efforts to tackle COVID-19 have negative consequences associated with them. These negative consequences include the risk of losing jobs, economic vulnerabilities, and psychological health issues resulting from isolation, loneliness, and uncertainty, among others. This can be regarded as the quarantine paradox. History has witnessed the weakening of the states in the face of pandemics and outbreaks. The Antonine plague of 161 AD had economically weakened the Roman Empire