Highlighting the various deficiencies with the current Domestic Violence Act, Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, S.C., has disclosed that the entire legislation will be repealed and replaced with modern laws that will feature harsh penalties for domestic violence perpetrators.
During his weekly, programme – Issues in the News, AG Nandlall explained that Government will not be amending but completely overhauling the Domestic Violence Act into a modern Family Violence Bill, which will correct all the deficiencies in the current legislation.
“This new bill that we’re working on, we took a lot of provisions from the United States of America. So, it’s a different type of legislation – very penal, very harsh because the problem that it is intended to address is one that is oppressive, one that is serious and one that has resulted in a tremendous amount of violence, deaths, sufferings, breaking up of families and a whole host of being in anguish. And you have to get a law to respond to that type of social problem,” the minister posited.
According to the Attorney General, the 1996 Domestic Violence Act has become outmoded and its weaknesses are glaring.
“Domestic violence by no measure has reduced in Guyana. The Act, therefore, has been rendered ineffective and so, we now have to make a law of that type effective. The Domestic Violence Act was essentially a legislation in civil law. The new bill will have both civil and criminal remedies,” he explained.
AG Nandlall went on to point out that under the current Domestic Violence Act, persons could have only been jailed for violating civil orders, and not for any criminal conduct.
“So, you had an order to put the man out of the house, or the woman; you had an order to restrain a particular activity from taking place but you had no sanctions, no offences of a criminal type. One had to go back under the ordinary criminal law to charge for assault, etc…”
“Now, it will be a different type of legislation. Persons will go to jail for Domestic Violence offences. Persons will be kept in custody rather than be restrained from going into a house or the matrimonial home, they’ll be locked up. It will have orders of that type to keep the abuser away from the victim,” he stated.
However, even as government is working on instituting harsher penalties for offenders of domestic violence acts, AG Nandlall is cognizant that this alone cannot tackle the issue. On this note, he contended that work is working on a multiplicity of initiatives including a study on the causes of gender-driven homicide.
