BC Coalition of Women's
Centres
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January 27, 2005
for immediate release
BC Liberals Ensure Women’s
Voices are Silenced
BC – The BC Coalition of
Women’s Centres was surprised by the announcement made yesterday by the BC
Liberal Government that $12.5 million dollars would be going into women’s
anti-violence services. An increase in
funding is not only much-needed, but is also long overdue.
However, this $12.5 million
does nothing to repair the damage already done to BC’s women by the Liberal
Government’s cutbacks and policy changes.
Violence against women
doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it exists because women’s inequality exists. Women’s economic security and respect of
their Human Rights are essential and intertwined components in the struggle to
end violence against women. In BC, however,
we have seen women forced further into poverty over the last few years, and
becoming more and more disenfranchised from their Human Rights.
Over the past few years, the
BC Liberals have made deep slashes into income assistance, legal aid for family
law, childcare, and other resources – cuts which have had a disproportionate
impact on women, and which have dramatically reduced the options women have
when trying to escape abusive situations.
The BC Liberals have also all but eliminated women’s access to redress
through Human Rights mechanisms, by ending legal aid for poverty law,
eradicating the BC Human Rights Commission, and eliminating funding to Women’s
Centres in March 2004.
Women’s Centres were
established for two purposes: to provide services to women in their
communities, and to work for equality and the respect of women’s Human
Rights. Unfortunately, women in
communities who access and need the services of Women’s Centres are being
denied those services due to the elimination of Women’s Centres’ funding.
It is because Women’s Centres
have been a public and vocal opponent to Human Rights infringements committed
by the BC Liberal government, as well as government-implemented measures
designed to push women further into poverty, that Women’s Centres funding was
cut. There can be no doubt that this is
the same reason Women’s Centres’ funding was not restored when it came time to
dole out pre-election dollars.
The decision made by the BC
Liberals to ignore the need to restore funding to Women’s Centres amounts to
playing politics with women’s lives- the BC Liberals have sent a clear message
to women’s groups that advancing women’s equality and human rights will no
longer be tolerated.
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