31 Things British Columbia Can Do Right Now to End Violence Against Women
10. Join the call for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women
Hundreds of Indigenous women and girls have gone missing in Canada in recent decades, the same women and girls whose sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and friends remain highly vulnerable to violent victimization and abuse. BC’s Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, which concluded in late 2012, failed to address the nationwide crisis of missing and murdered First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and girls, or to effectively include the voices of affected communities. A national inquiry is needed in order to uncover systemic factors that contribute to this vulnerability, and to address the scale and severity of the violence faced by Canada’s Indigenous women and girls.
Women in British Columbia have waited too long already. That is why we are offering 31 things that BC’s new Provincial Office of Domestic Violence (PODV) can push for right now to increase safety for women and to bring us closer than we have ever been to ending violence against women once and for all. We are calling for 31 social, economic and legal changes, none of which are unachievable in this province. Some would require very little financial investment, and each of them will save resources in the long term given the high costs of violence against women.
For more information:
1. Call violence against women what it is
2. Audit for compliance with BC’s Violence Against Women in Relationship policy
3. Address the immediate financial and housing needs of women fleeing violence
5. Make addressing women’s inequality a core learning objective for all BC students
6. Add sexual violence by police to the mandate of the Independent Investigations Office
7. Address the feminization of poverty with a provincial anti-poverty plan
8. Push to add gender and sex to the hate crime provisions of Canada’sCriminal Code
9. Bring back regional coordination committees for women’s safety
10. Join the call for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women
11. Do not let immigration status stand in the way of women’s safety
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