The Antigua and Barbuda Girl Guides Association is mobilising over 140 people, mostly youth, for the gender-based violence (GBV) awareness and advocacy walk happening in Antigua on International Women’s Day, March 8th, 2025. The event is called Men & Women United 2025: Stop Gender Based Violence, and it starts at 2pm in the Botanical Gardens.
Marcia Persaud, Deputy Chief Commissioner of the Girl Guides, said the organisation wants to send a message that protecting the human rights of women and girls in Antigua and Barbuda, and ensuring girls and women’s safety was a national imperative.
“We strongly believe in protecting girls’ futures and that means standing up on issues that are deeply impactful to our girls and to women,” Persaud said, adding that part of the organisation’s aim in joining the event was to “empower our members by helping them to know their rights”. Persaud said the organisation has been growing lately. At times, she said, they are inundated with messages from parents, especially mothers, asking about the opportunities to get their daughters involved in the Girl Guides.
The upcoming walk is organised by the Integrated Health Outreach Gender Based Violence Coalition (IHO-GBV) in partnership with the Directorate of Gender Affairs (DoGA). IHO-GBV is an arm of the nonprofit organisation Integrated Health Outreach (IHO). IHO’s Communications Officer Kieron Murdoch said that the organisation was “truly elated” that the Girl Guides were mobilising in such significant numbers. He said that by far, it is likely to be the largest of any of the organised groups that are joining the walk on March 8th.
“We’re still in awe. We kept asking for more, and they kept sending more names, but we are certainly not complaining. We want as many residents of Antigua and Barbuda as possible to come out to send a message of zero tolerance for gender-based violence, to send a message to survivors that violence is never their fault and to say that there is no excuse for abuse. We want to send a message to every institution and throughout our communities that violence, harassment and other forms of abuse must be taken seriously and never ignored. Women’s and girls’ safety is a human right. It is not negotiable,” Murdoch said.
Girl Guides is a worldwide movement with organisations active in 150 countries. They create a programme for girls and young women that offers activities, skills development, and opportunities for community service. Among their goals is to help girls become confident and independent. The Girl Guides in Antigua and Barbuda participated in the awareness walk in 2024 and have also been part of IHO and DoGA’s youth GBV workshops this month at the Multipurpose Centre.
The Men & Women United 2025: Stop Gender Baed VIolence Walk is a project implemented by IHO in partnership with the DoGA and supported by the Equality Fund and Global Affairs Canada. Anyone can register for the walk here: https://qrco.de/bfg85S.
Gender-based violence is a gross violation of human rights, a public health crisis, an obstacle to sustainable development, and a scourge that our society too often ignores. This type of violence results from societal norms about men’s and women’s roles and their value in society and must be treated as a violation of a person’s fundamental right to safety and autonomy.
