**A Crisis within a Crisis: Climate Change and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Trinidad and Tobago: A Narrative Review**

#### **Roshnie A. Doon and Debra D. Joseph**

**Abstract:** Across the world, Stay at Home (SAH) and State of Emergencies (SOE) have been executed at various levels of intensity to preserve the lives and livelihoods of men, women, and their families against the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while these policies were implemented to protect lives, they also became a barrier to the security of men and women who are victims of domestic violence. Indeed, the literature has highlighted a worrying trend, in that there appears to not only be a rise in the various forms of domestic violence against victims resulting directly from the SAH measures, but also in the context of climate change, issues of lack of safety, food insecurity and economic insecurity in a COVID-19 environment have all served to intensify the experiences of victims. Using a secondary research methodology, the primary focus of this chapter is to explore the prevalence of non-extreme forms of domestic violence offences in Trinidad and Tobago occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic, its connection to climate change events, and how these changes are likely to fuel domestic violence.

#### **1. Introduction**

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), better known as the Global Goals, are a collective call to action towards the resolution of many social, economic, and environmental ills that plague our world, in the hope that future generations may live a sustainable life. Of the 17 goals established by the United Nations (UN), the goal on Climate Action, i.e., goal 13, is the one that is the most critical to the survival of the human race, as it focuses on the need to take urgent action to transform the industrial activities of the leading producers of greenhouse gasses (GHG), which are having irreversible and long-lasting effects on poorer nations across the world (United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 2022). The losses accumulated from climate change-related disasters pose not only a significantly large financial cost to global economies through recovery and resilience efforts, but also have a notable impact on the lives and livelihoods of many persons around the world (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2022a).

It is for this reason that if Goal 13, the Call to Climate Action, is not achieved, then this can worsen the ability of the world to achieve many of the other SDGs by 2030, especially when it comes to Goals 5 and 10, which focus on gender equality, and reduced inequalities (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2022b; United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2022c). It is therefore essential to understand how the drivers of gender inequality such as climate change have contributed to the prevalence of gender-based violence in Trinidad and Tobago, as climate change events may act as a trigger for violent incidents (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2022d).

The prolonged presence of the COVID-19 pandemic has unfortunately worsened the situation of many victims of domestic violence (Adibelli et al. 2021). In that, not only have SAH measures trapped victims with their abusers, but the disruption in the functions in many sectors, such as healthcare, education, transportation, etc., have reduced their access to essential health services needed during instances of intense abuse, which may lead to severe wounds, such as traumatic brain injuries, hemorrhages, vision impairments, contusions, lacerations, and strangulation marks, as well as broken bones and fractures.

Bearing in mind that climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic when combined may have created the perfect breeding ground for domestic violence to occur in Trinidad and Tobago (Akel et al. 2021; Berniell and Facchini 2021; Glazebrook et al. 2020). This chapter will examine in great detail using a secondary research methodology not only how domestic violence manifested itself during the pandemic around the world, but also analyze the prevalence of non-extreme forms of domestic violence offences in Trinidad and Tobago, the link between climate change and domestic violence in Trinidad and Tobago, and how climate change has contributed to the occurrence of domestic violence, before examining the challenges and future perspectives of the issue for Trinidad and Tobago.

Notwithstanding the significance and importance of GBV in relation to the issue of climate change, there are several limitations of the work performed in this study. These limitations mostly concern the availability of data, and the statistical coverage of domestic violence incidents in Trinidad and Tobago, which if available may have allowed for greater empirical and applied research to be carried out. In particular, there is very little historical domestic violence data collected, and as a result it is not possible to determine if the patterns of domestic violence have intergenerational effects. Furthermore, the data collected on domestic violence in Trinidad and Tobago are limited in scope, in that only basic information concerning the victims such as age, sex, and marital status is collected, which also limits the level of analysis. Should this information be expanded to include information such as their level of education, previous instances of abuse, and presence of children in the household, it would have made for a much richer analysis of domestic violence in Trinidad and Tobago. That being said, one particular line of future research may possibly be to examine the impact that climate change has on the men who are victims of domestic violence in the Caribbean in relation to climate change. This is likely to add a great dimension to the literature as domestic violence amongst men is not at the forefront of the climate change and domestic violence discussion.

#### **2. Global Manifestations of Domestic Violence during the COVID-19 Pandemic**

The COVID-19 pandemic is an event that has forced the world to face many of its insecurities. From issues surrounding the equitable distribution of food and health care to that of political and economic instability, it appears that no one has been spared from the turmoil that the pandemic has unearthed. One such area that has received great attention during the COVID-19 pandemic is that of violence within the home environment, and its many linkages to topics such as Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), Gender Based Violence (GBV), Mental Health, Poverty, and Income Insecurity.

During the pandemic era, domestic violence in its many variations has raised its head to reveal some devastating outcomes, such as the prevalence of mental health disorders amongst pregnant women who are victims of domestic violence. Abrahams et al. (2021) explain that in a COVID-19 environment, the psychological distress that pregnant South African women experienced alongside severe food insecurity, sexual abuse, and marital distress, made many of them even more pre-disposed to common mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than in the pre-pandemic period. Similar to pregnant women, married women who were homemakers in India, as illustrated by Indu et al. (2021), exhibited depressive, anxiety, and perceived stress symptoms, which were strongly associated with domestic violence offences. Sleeping disorders were also highlighted by Peraud et al. (2021) as another contributing factor associated with domestic violence against women in France.

A similar outcome was observed for Lebanese women who were not pregnant during quarantine periods, where victims suffered from higher levels of anxiety and stress during extremely abusive situations (Akel et al. 2021). In most instances, forced cohabitation between victims and perpetrators of domestic violence was often one of the main causes of such abuse to persist during quarantine, as the possibility of conflicts and instances of interpersonal violence increased (De Berardis et al. 2021). For example, in the case of Italy, women were found to have less control over their movement, especially during stressful conditions, and were less likely to report the incident (Barchielli et al. 2021). Despite the lack of formal reporting, it was found that in the case of Italy and other European countries such as France, Germany and Spain, 5 weeks after the March 2020 lockdown, the intensity to which domestic violence searches were carried out via Google mobility data for these countries was at its highest, i.e., 20% (Berniell and Facchini 2021).

In contrast to that of European women, in the Portuguese context, even though the telephone remained the primary means of communication, many victims of domestic violence never used either social media platforms such as Facebook or videoconferencing applications such as Zoom, Microsoft teams, etc., during quarantine, and as a result, these victims received less remote support (Caridade et al. 2021b). Thus, victims of domestic violence such as those in Belgium reported greater dissatisfaction with healthcare services, and social support, and higher levels of emotional loneliness and vulnerability (Drieskens et al. 2022). Such

factors in many instances influenced the ability of victims such as women in Turkey, reducing their ability to effectively cope with stress (Evcili and Demirel 2022). This causes the victims' perception of stress to increase, which in turn increases their likelihood of worsening health and mental health outcomes.

Another manifestation of such psychological abuse is emotional abuse. Turkish women during the pandemic were found to suffer from stronger intensities of emotional and verbal abuse even if they were literate. This problem was worsened further if the woman and her partner were both unemployed during periods of lockdown (Adibelli et al. 2021). This consequence was also mirrored by married Saudi Arabian women, who endured multiple forms of domestic violence during quarantine, i.e., violent abuse (87.7%), emotional abuse (37.9%), and sexual abuse (39.9%), especially if they had many children (Alharbi et al. 2021). El-Nimir et al. (2021) explain that in the case of Arab women, 50% of victims were exposed to psychological violence during periods of lockdown at least one to three times per month, and sometimes daily if their partner lost his job during quarantine.

Apart from the social implications of the pandemic on domestic violence, the economic consequences of the virus also influenced the rate and intensity of domestic violence cases. As illustrated by Arenas-Arroyo et al. (2021), even though the economic impact of the pandemic was found to be significantly larger than the stints of lockdown, it was found that if the economic situation of the man in the household was to worsen during this period, his partner was more likely to experience the backlash from the loss of his job. In India, it was found that the type of marriage (Sikh, Parsi, Muslim, Buddhist, and Jain marriages, just to name a few), the area of residence, the husbands' age and education, and the employment status of the women were all variables (Rayhan and Akter 2021).

Given that women were more likely to have become unemployed between March 2020 to September 2021, this also increased the risk of their children dropping out of school permanently, neglecting the care of their children and dependent family members, and suffering from GBV as their level of uncertainty and job loss increased (Flor et al. 2022). Such economic instability at the household level, together with a marked decline in education amongst girls, was also noted to have led to a rise in early marriages in Bangladeshi girls originating from rural communities (Gautam et al. 2021).

Apart from the marked increase in violence against women during the pandemic, countries such as Ethiopia have noted the rise in cases against young girls. According to Kassie et al. (2022), 40.05% of Ethiopian girls have experienced some sort of violence, with psychological abuse being its primary form during the pandemic period. This statistic was positively associated with the use of social media, viewing of explicit content and substance abuse. Similar to young girls in Ethiopia, 27.6% of young adolescent girls in Kenya experienced IPV during the pandemic, and its occurrence is associated with poor support mechanisms in the home and community, and their partner's age difference (Decker et al. 2022). Further to this, as school closures continued after the initial lockdowns from March 2020, the state of Florida in

the United States also continued to record high cases of juvenile arrests for domestic violence, predominantly amongst Black and Hispanic youths (Baglivio et al. 2022).

Notwithstanding the overall impact that domestic violence has had on victims around the world, Drotning et al. (2022) find that the victims' sexual orientation also played a crucial role in their risk of violence. Sexual minorities in the United States were noted to have suffered a greater incidence of domestic violence than victims who were heterosexuals. In addition to this, other minority groups such as Refugees were noted by Mutambara et al. (2021) to have suffered from the negative effects of violence, by having their needs for safety during the pandemic ignored by state officials and excluded from mitigation measures.

In most cases of IPV and GVB cases, victims reportedly suffered from many forms of abuse cited in the literature such as physical, verbal, emotional, economic, and sexual manipulation; however, during the pandemic, new types of violence against women emerged. For Nigerian women, such violence manifested itself as threats to be thrown out of their homes by offenders, and threats concerning losing custody of their children, which in both instances hinder their ability to protect themselves and their children from becoming exposed to the COVID-19 virus (Fawole et al. 2021). In many instances, as discussed by Leigh et al. (2022), the virus was used by the perpetrators of domestic violence as a tool to control their victims and make them more submissive. This is an important issue, as McLay (2020) explains, that even in Chicago, United States, when Stay at Home Orders were issued, not only were domestic violence incidents more likely to occur, but offenders were less likely to have been arrested.

#### **3. Research Methodology**

For the purposes of this chapter, a secondary research methodology will be implemented to investigate the linkage between climate change and gender-based violence in Trinidad and Tobago during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main type of research conducted is that of secondary research or desk research as the data used in this chapter was retrieved from the TTPS and the Metrological Office of Trinidad and Tobago, while drawing on articles, journals and reports as discussed below. This type of research was chosen for this study because of its cost effectiveness, and it is largely based on existing research that aids in achieving the objectives of this chapter.

First, to examine how domestic violence cases manifested themselves around the world, several sources of scholarly literature are used to investigate the experience of victims around the world. Second, to study both the prevalence of non-extreme forms of domestic violence offences and its relationship to climate change in Trinidad and Tobago, domestic violence and climate change data were sourced from the Meteorological office of Trinidad and Tobago, and the Crime and Problem Analysis (CAPA) unit of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS).

The data which were collected during the period of 2020–2021 were compiled by the Crime and Problem Analysis (CAPA) unit of the Trinidad and Tobago Police

Service (TTPS). This registry is notably limited in nature due to a lack of resources by the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) to put together a comprehensive domestic violence database, and as a result the database only gathers information on the date of the incident, month and year when the incident occurred, the division and station where the incident was reported, the type of offence, the marital status of the victim, the victims' citizenship, ethnicity, occupation, sex, date of birth and age. It is well-known, however, that issues surrounding the non-collection and incomplete gathering of domestic violence data are cited throughout the literature as being a common limitation to carrying out empirical-type analyses that can aid policy development in this area.

Third and finally, to understand how climate change is likely to fuel domestic violence in the Caribbean, and the challenges that it poses to the region, a host of scholarly literature, reports, and discussion papers are used. The use of the secondary research methodology is paramount to the success of this chapter, as it enables one to not only identify and fill current research gaps in the literature that concern the Caribbean perspective that climate change has concerning gender-based violence, but to also serve as a starting point to understanding how climate change adaptation and mitigation plans influence the environmental linkages of violence.
