Keynote Address by H.E. Dr. IzBen C. Williams to National and Regional Leaders and other high-level officials of the Caribbean Community of Nations, attending the Regional Symposium on Violence Prevention as a Public Health Issue, and its related Crime Challenge, at Trinidad’s Hyatt Regency, 17-18 April 2023
The perspective that VPA promotes revolves around three theoretical models: the typology of violence, the public health approach and the ecological framework. These models guide understanding, research and action for violence prevention. The typology is a tool to help organize thinking about the types of violence and the ways in which violence occurs. The public health approach offers practitioners, policy-makers and researchers a step-wise guide that can be applied to planning programmes, policies, and investigation. Finally, the ecological framework bridges these two models, giving a structure to understanding the contexts within which violence occurs and the interactions between risk factors in each of these contexts and between them. The ecological framework shows where and how to apply the public health approach and is useful for categorizing planned or existing interventions to help understand the mechanisms by which they might be working.
Every religion contains, in varying degrees, elements of the soft and the hard. For the sake of world peace, dialogue within religions and among them must strengthen the softer aspects.
The effect of families on whether children do or do not flourish has long been recognized by psychology. However, families do not spring up in isolation from their social, economic, and cultural contexts. As the primary means of socialization, families have to prepare children to function in their larger cultural context. In other words, what we are dealing with is not a matter of simple causes and effects but of mutually supporting interactive systems dynamics.
Analyzing these interactive dynamics has been the focus of my multi-disciplinary cross-cultural historical study of human societies. (Eisler, 1987; 1995; 2000; 2007) This study led to the identification of two underlying cultural configurations that transcend conventional categories such as religious vs. secular, Eastern vs. Western, preindustrial vs. industrial, or rightist vs. leftist: the partnership system and the domination system.
No society is a pure domination or partnership system. However, as I will briefly develop in this chapter, the degree to which a society orients to either end of the partnership/domination continuum affects the kinds of beliefs and behaviors people consider normal or abnormal, moral or immoral, and even possible or impossible – with profound implications for whether or not children flourish. Read More
Attacking Crime, Violence and Homicide: Unity is Strength Patrick Martin August 31, 2018 The profound wisdom of our culture says, “One hand can’t clap”. Unity, a coalition of political will, is critical to restoring societal peace. Ours is a nation burdened with post-traumatic ailments. Knowing what we are personally experiencing, the citizenry continues to plead… Read More
