The Executive Director of the Directorate of Gender Affairs, Mr. Jamie Saunders, today addressed the Tenth Conference of States Parties to the Follow-up Mechanism of the Belém do Para Convention, in Fortaleza, Brazil, where he spoke about digital gender based violence in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The meeting is focused on digital gender based violence legislation and policies, and is being attended by Government Ministers, Directors of Gender Machineries, representatives of International Development agencies, and civil society representatives.

Saunders spoke on a high level panel entitled “From commitment to implementation: Pathways to Apply the model law on digital violence against women”.

Other members of the panel included Ingrid Gomez Saracibar, Deputy Secretary for the Right of a Life Free from violence, Women’s Secretariat, ANC mexico, Ana Carolina Querino, Acting Representative of UN Women in Brazil, as well as Ms. Rubiela Hiperderecho, Representative of the Belém do Para Regional Articulation.

In his intervention, Director Saunders spoke about legislation in Antigua and Barbuda such as the Domestic violence act, and the Electronic Crimes act, and emphasized the importance of awareness and sensitization, data collection, the engagement of telecommunications and social media/app developers, training and judicial agility in terms of willingness to make legislative amendments, as critical components needed to ensure digital gender based violence legislation can be effectively and impactfully created and implemented.

At this meeting an Inter-American model law to prevent, Punish, and Eradicate Gender-Based based digital violence will be adopted and member states will be encouraged to examine enacting legislation such as this, within the respective jurisdictions.