By Antonio Dey | HGP Nightly News |
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is deepening its strategic partnership with Guyana’s media fraternity, urging journalists and editors to shift toward human-centered reporting that exposes critical social crises disproportionately affecting women and young girls.
Speaking during a high-level media briefing in Georgetown, Adler Bynoe, Liaison Specialist at the UNFPA Sub-Regional Office for the Caribbean/Guyana, emphasized that systemic violations such as gender-based violence (GBV), adolescent pregnancy, incest, and child marriage remain critically under-reported and marginalized in public discourse.
The UN agency highlighted that empirical data demonstrates a direct link between teen pregnancies and sexual violence across Guyana, calling on the fourth estate to deliver comprehensive, survivor-centric, and evidence-driven coverage.
Data-Driven Realities: Intimate Partner Violence and the Incest Link
Presenting statistical benchmarks on regional vulnerabilities, Bynoe noted that Guyana remains among the UNFPA’s primary intervention targets alongside Barbados, Belize, St. Lucia, and Suriname:
- Sobering IPV Statistics: Verified data indicates that the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Guyana stands at 10.5% in the past year and reaches a staggering 38% over a woman’s lifetime.
- Sexual Violence Fueling Teen Pregnancy: Bynoe revealed that high rates of adolescent pregnancy in Guyana and the wider Caribbean are frequently not consensual events, but the direct consequence of criminal assault, statutory rape, and incest.
- Persistent Gaps in Action: While acknowledging positive interventions by state agencies and civil society over the past five years, the UNFPA underscored that major structural gaps remain in victim safeguarding, survivor support, and prosecution.
“There is a linkage between adolescent pregnancy and gender-based violence because the data tells us that high level of adolescent pregnancy is as a result of incest and rape,” Bynoe stated bluntly.
“The data tells us that there is still a lot of work to be done in Guyana on this issue. We cannot deny that fact that significantly over the 5 years work has been done, but there is still more work to be done.”
New Five-Year Sub-Regional Programme: 2027 to 2031
Bynoe officially announced that a major new programmatic framework is slated for formal endorsement by the Government of Guyana to accelerate progress across reproductive rights and gender justice:
- Timeline and Governance: Scheduled to run from January 2027 to 2031, the Sub-Regional Programme for the Caribbean and Guyana will define the UNFPA’s country-level financing, technical assistance, and strategic interventions.
- Core Mandates: The five-year roadmap targets four foundational pillars: ending the unmet need for modern family planning, drastically reducing maternal mortality, curbing adolescent pregnancy rates, and eliminating gender-based violence and harmful cultural practices.
Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Zero Tolerance for Child Marriage
Technical officers within the UNFPA Guyana Liaison Office addressed specific operational prongs designed to protect vulnerable youth:
- Age-Appropriate Scientific Education: Dr. Mandy LaFleur, Sexual and Reproductive Health Officer within the UNFPA Guyana Liaison Office, stressed the need to expand Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), noting that the curriculum is designed to equip adolescents with age-appropriate, scientifically accurate knowledge to protect themselves from exploitation and make informed life decisions.
- Eradicating Child Marriage: Addressing questions on child marriage and child labor in remote and vulnerable communities, Dr. Batula Abdi, Sexual and Reproductive Health Officer at the UNFPA, reaffirmed the agency’s uncompromising zero-tolerance doctrine under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
- Keeping Girls in School: Dr. Abdi underscored that UNFPA continues to support protective legislation and grassroots community interventions designed to retain adolescent girls in the formal school system, shield them from gender-based abuse, and support their academic and professional development.
“The Convention on the Rights of the Child specifies that children are free from abuse and be protected, and child marriages are one of those abuses, and from the UNFPA… zero tolerance,” Dr. Abdi affirmed.
The UNFPA concluded the engagement by urging media houses to treat coverage of gender-based violence not as sensational crime tabloids, but as human rights reporting that holds institutions accountable and promotes survivor dignity.
