Domestic Violence and Abuse as a Shadow Pandemic: An International and Interdisciplinary View

Domestic Violence and Abuse as a Shadow Pandemic investigates, analyses and presents statistics to assess the claim by UN WOMEN that domestic violence constituted a ’shadow’ pandemic to the COVID-19 pandemic. The drivers of violence, mitigation strategies, and State and agency responses are discussed with data from more than 80 countries, covering North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australasia.

Contributors to the book include judges and magistrates who preside in the Family Courts as well as academics and stakeholders from international agencies who publish in the field of domestic violence and who produce policy reports to mitigate and eradicate domestic abuse and gender-based violence. Their coverage includes the examination of the following themes: (1) The disproportionate impact of domestic abuse and violence on marginalised communities including indigenous groups, forced migrants and undocumented workers, persons of colour, rural residents, those with physical or mental disabilities and the sexually differentiated. (2) The degree of inclusiveness and adequacy of local anti-domestic violence legislation for protecting victims and deterring offenders. (3) The role of the UN system, its international conventions and monitoring reports on the text of national domestic violence Statutes and on State services for victims, in each country reviewed. (4) Access to justice and legal relief for adult and child victims of domestic abuse and violence. (5) The crafting of suitable interventions and policies to eliminate domestic violence and abuse. (6) Benefits of the pandemic that support victims of violence.

Written in non-technical language, and international and interdisciplinary in scope, this book will appeal to a wide ranging readership, including scholars and students of Criminology, Sociology, Social Work, Law, Psychology, and International Politics, as well as practitioners working in the field of domestic violence and policymakers.

Florence Seemungal is a Trinidadian multi-disciplinary researcher and a Research Associate of the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, and an Adjunct Staff, the University of the West Indies Open Campus since 2011 where she delivers an array of courses psychology courses for undergraduates enrolled in the BSc Youth Development Work, BSc Social Work and BSc Psychology degree programs. She is a founder member of the Oxford-Tulane Developmental Justice Network established in 2017 now the Oxford-Maudsley Developmental Justice Consortium. She is a member of the Law and Society Association (USA) and publishes in the field of capital punishment with analyse on domestic homicides and the implementation of the death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago and on death penalty reform in the Caribbean.