JUSTICE Minister Naomi Long has said she hopes to bring a paper to next week’s executive meeting on a strategy to protect women and girls in the North of Ireland from violence.
Mrs Long said: “There isn’t an overarching strategy in terms of violence against women and girls”.
Earlier in March, Women’s Aid launched its campaign for such a strategy to be introduced.
The North of Ireland is the only part of the UK without a specific strategy.
Mrs Long told the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster programme. “What we need to do at executive, I believe, is to have a strategy that encompasses education, health communities, and others.
“I think that these are serious issues, I think that we need to take it seriously.”
She said she believed the Executive Office should be involved due to “their coordinating role across the executive to ensure that it is properly funded and resourced, and has proper direction to it”.
Naomi Long said during her time as justice minister, her party had brought forward a number of related pieces of legislation.
She added that legislation would be brought forward to deal with upskirting, which is as specific offence elsewhere the UK, but not Northern Ireland – although this would not happen until May.
Upskirting is when images are taken underneath a victim’s clothing without permission.
Mrs Long said the bill was “much more complex than simply upskirting, or down-blousing” and that it “is to cover a whole range of serious sexual offences and a few other justice issues”.
The Domestic Abuse and Family Proceedings Bill was given royal assent earlier this month.
The long-awaited piece of legislation means domestic abuse offences in Northern Ireland will no longer be limited to physically violent behaviour.
Responding to the minister’s comments, Women’s Aid said it was “happy with this statement”, but that an “open, transparent conversation and discussion about what needs to be in the strategy” is needed.
“There needs to be consultation and Women’s Aid need to be around that table and they need to listen to the voices of women and girls to provide direction and meet their needs within a strategy,” the group said.
Upon launching its campaign earlier this month, Women’s Aid emphasised “that a strategy tackling gender-based violence will not discount the valid experiences of other gender identities”, but instead would “address the reality of the situation which is that women and girls are disproportionately affected”.
Speaking on Thursday morning, Louse Haigh, the shadow NI secretary, said it was “concerning to hear the first minister almost underplay the level of the issue in Northern Ireland”.
The Labour MP was responding to earlier comments given in an interview by Arlene Foster, in which she said: “We all know that there are those in society – and Northern Ireland has a very low record of this sort of activity, but it happens.
“Those of us who are in public life are fully aware of the threats of violence that we receive.”
Ms Haigh said Northern Ireland had a “a specific issue with violence against women and girls”.
“Because it is a post-conflict society and there is a significant amount of research to suggest that after the Troubles ended and after the violence ended on the streets that a lot of that violence was brought into the home and turned on intimate partners,” she said.
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