Almas Jiwani, President of UN Women National Committee Canada, delivered a keynote address to advocates and professionals from a wide range of gender, health, education and social development disciplines from across the Caribbean and around the world at the Conference on Domestic Violence and Gender Equality: Protecting Women and Girls to be held March 25-27, 2013 in Tobago. Jiwani challenged conference participants through her speech on the topic of More Than Just Words: Speaking up and Speaking out about Domestic and Gender Based Violence to Transform Laws, Policies and Actions. Participants also strategized on how to improve safety and change gender norms related to domestic violence and how this will impact their work in terms of practice, research and policy. “Domestic violence is a devastating offense, a form of violence against women and an infringement of women’s fundamental human rights. However, domestic violence remains a vastly underreported crime and it is through conferences like this one that we can bring so many activists from around the world together to share ideas and raise awareness of the destructive affect that violence has on women and what can be done to protect women from domestic violence,” says Almas Jiwani. “By speaking out against domestic and gender based violence, it is my hope to transform laws, policies and actions in addition to building strategic alliances across the region and internationally that lead to better identification, intervention and treatment for victims and offenders,” she added. The Caribbean Conference on Domestic Violence and Gender Equality, organized by the Global Center for Behavioural Health (GCBH) was honoured to have Ms. Almas Jiwani as a keynote speaker