violence in latin america and the caribbean: a framework for action

positive role models needed for healthy child development.

Informal community educational activities, which teach citizens about legal sanctions against violence, effective community-based prevention strategies, and social services available to victims of violence, are also appropriate. Non-governmental organizations are important in undertaking these efforts, as are community associations of various kinds. Women=s groups might be particularly instrumental in carrying out informal educational activities to address domestic violence. Similar activities can be productively directed at men--the likely aggressors in such circumstances--as has taken place in the 1990s in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Mexico. These programs have both a remedial component, teaching violent men to control violent behavior, and a preventive one, helping to delink the notions of masculinity and violence.

Mass-media educational campaigns represent a potentially effective response by providing non-violent role models and by reinforcing non-violent responses. Along these lines, the InterAmerican Development Bank, in collaboration with governments and women=s groups throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, developed and distributed an educational video that seeks to raise awareness about the problem of domestic violence. Educational efforts can also involve the commercial media, encouraging them to produce and disseminate more positive images of interpersonal interactions (male-female and adult-child). Illustrations of non-violent resolution of conflicts are helpful, especially in entertainment programming such as soap operas. The results of many studies carried out in the United States point to the role of more positive portrayals of women and of the non-violent resolution to conflicts in reducing both domestic and social violence (Pan American Health Organization, 1996; Shifter, 1997). The involvement of the 35