GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Guyana on Wednesday used the start of a three-day Ministerial Forum on Gender Equality and Empowerment to criticize the international community over its failure to adopt a ceasefire in Gaza, where women and girls are being “slaughtered.”
“At a bare minimum, why can’t this world collectively call for a ceasefire? Why can’t we collectively call for a ceasefire?” President Irfaan Ali told the opening ceremony of the conference, which is also being attended by ministers from Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, St. Lucia, and Belize.
Ali, who reflected on the vulnerability of women and children in Haiti and Ukraine, said the “senseless” killings in Gaza should be stopped following Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, resulting in thousands of lives being lost on both sides.
Ali said while he believes that there is no defense or justification for terrorism equally, there should be no space for any world leader who “presides over the slaughtering of men, women, and children.”
Like the crisis in Gaza, President Ali said that women and children in the French-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries of Haiti and Ukraine, where Russia invaded the Eastern European country in February last year, are also immensely vulnerable.
He told the audience that the world seemed to be divided when responding to the conflict and crises in Gaza and Haiti but not Ukraine, saying that there should be no division because people are suffering in all three countries.
“Some of the more powerful voices in the world remain silent as women and girls are slaughtered in Gaza… they lie silent when they are harmed in Haiti, and I am happy that they are loud about the suffering in Ukraine as we all should be,” he said, adding “there cannot be much more hypocrisy in the world.”
Last week, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) approved a nonbinding resolution calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza, leading to a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
Twelve CARICOM countries, excluding Jamaica, voted in favor of the resolution. The 193-member world body adopted the resolution by a vote of 120-14 with 45 abstentions after rejecting a Canadian amendment backed by the United States.
The three-day conference will discuss various issues on strategies and shared experiences, advancing the cause of gender equality and empowerment. It is being held under the theme “Shared experiences towards developing robust national and regional models for the 2030 Agenda.”
The organizers said the event will focus on two main pillars, namely gender-based violence (GBV), with statistics indicating that intimate partner violence affects a portion of women’s lives and support for women in the workplace.
The forum’s agenda includes panel discussions on critical gender-related issues, as well as presentations from women leaders from across the region.
In his address, President Ali underscored the need to empower women and the efforts of his administration to ensure that Guyanese women are better supported by providing more training and education opportunities as well as offering more scholarships through the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL).
Ali said 70 percent of the more than 20,000 persons in the GOAL scholarship program are women, and he believes this is allowing more women to get equipped with the necessary skills and certifications needed to get better employment opportunities and financial independence.
“It is not guesswork what Guyana is doing,” Ali said, pointing to the government’s strategies to empower women.
He said more local women are getting involved in the construction sector and owning new businesses. Many new agricultural ventures, including the shade house initiative and the expanding livestock sector, affect more women and young people.
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