May 2013- In the course of two weeks, the Yemeni Family Care Association (YFCA) in coordination with the Women National Committee (WNC) organized two trainings on Gender-based Violence with support of UNFPA.
The first 3-day training targeted 30 health service providers (doctors, nurses and midwives) from three governorates; Sana’a, Ibb and Hadramout. While the 2nd 3-day training targeted 30 police officers and security personnel from Sana’a, Ibb and Hadramout as well.
The sessions of the two trainings focused on many important issues related to violence against women such as:
· basic concepts of gender and violence,
· most important terms of violence against women,
· types of violence against women, sexual assaults,
· mechanism for screening and diagnosis GBV cases,
· violence against women in the international law,
· monitoring and referral of violence against women cases,
· violence and psychological abuse,
· psychological, psychiatric symptoms associated with violence,
· psychological effects of violence and its reflection on children and many other related issues.
In the opening ceremony of police officers’ training, Mr. Marc Vandenberghe, UNFPA Representative, spoke generally about violence against women that takes many forms, including early marriage and physical violence in all its forms. He said that VAW is a serious problem in Yemen and there is no sharp data on GBV yet but there is a recent survey carried out by UNFPA/UNWomen among 4221 women in 12 governorates in which one third (1,333 women) declared that they once had been beaten by a family member.
Mr. Vandenberghe stressed the importance of the training for security personnel to understand the problem and how to deal with the issue because combating violence against women will eventually contribute to social and economic development in Yemen.
It is worth mentioning that in the two training workshops, the first GBV manual developed by UNFPA last year, was used.
