When Paper is Not Enough: Rethinking Protection for Intimate Partner Violence Survivors in the Northwest Territories
When violence happens at home, the promise of safety becomes complicated: leaving is not always possible; staying is not always safe.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a pervasive issue across Canada, with disproportionate impacts on women and Indigenous communities. In the Northwest Territories (NWT), the crisis is especially severe. The rate of police-reported IPV in the territories is ten times the national average (Status of Women Council NWT 2020, 5). More than 80 per cent of those affected are women and Indigenous women – who already face the lasting impacts of colonial violence, systemic inequality, and social marginalization – and are twice as likely than their non-Indigenous counterparts to experience IPV (Conroy 2021, 31).
In response, the NWT introduced the Protection Against Family Violence Act in 2005, allowing survivors of violence to apply for Emergency Protection Orders (EPOs). These orders are intended to provide timely, accessible legal remedies to remove violent partners from shared homes and prevent further harm. But in practice, many survivors must monitor and enforce these orders themselves – particularly in remote communities without a local police presence. For survivors experiencing violence, this creates complex logistical and structural challenges in preventing and responding to IPV.
As a sparsely populated and geographically vast region, many communities in the NWT remain isolated, inaccessible by road, and underserved by legal, health, and social services. About one third of NWT communities have no RCMP detachment, and if no officer is present to witness an EPO breach, there is little recourse (Moffitt & Fikowski 2017, 20). Survivors are therefore expected to monitor their own safety, document EPO violations, and initiate enforcement – all while experiencing emotional, psychological, and often physical distress (Moffitt et al. 2020, 3, 11). For many, this renders a life-saving protection order to “just a piece of paper” (Moffitt et al. 2020, 7).
This responsibility can be onerous to survivors, discouraging continued engagement with the legal system and reducing the practical utility of EPOs in high-risk situations. Enforcement failures such as this reflect the layered realities of life in the NWT, where vast distances, limited infrastructure, and deep social ties complicate every step of seeking safety.
In small communities where everyone knows one another, survivors are rarely anonymous. Disclosing abuse can lead to community gossip, family backlash, or perpetrator retaliation (Moffitt et al. 2013, 4). Survivors are then often left navigating not only physical isolation but also the emotional calculus of exposure, trust, and risk in tight-knit environments. Within this context, survivors may have to choose between their own safety and their kin. The result: survivors stay silent; perpetrators remain unaccountable.
Unsurprisingly, attitudes like “putting up with violence, shutting up about violence, and getting on with life” (Moffitt & Fikowski 2017, 5) becomes not only a coping mechanism but a survival strategy, perpetuating what the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified as a serious public health problem (Women and Gender Equality Canada 2025).
In the NWT, one in three residents lives more than 100 kilometers from a domestic violence shelter (FWCO Management Consultants Ltd. 2020, 35). For many survivors, reaching safety means traveling long distances by snowmobile or charter flight, often with children in tow. Some shelters have reported re-admission rates as high as 73 per cent (Government of Northwest Territories 2018, 54), showing how difficult it is to remain safe. When transportation is limited, shelters are full, and the RCMP is hours away, EPOs can start to feel like empty promises.
But it is not only these barriers that deter survivors from seeking EPOs. For many Indigenous women, turning to the legal system means turning to a colonial institution that has long inflicted harm through residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and the forced separation of families. This history has fostered deep mistrust. Many survivors fear that the system will not believe them. Others fear that involving the legal system could criminalize their partners, disrupt their family, or expose their children to state intervention. These fears are not unfounded. When legal responses fail to reflect Indigenous realities or fail to offer culturally appropriate supports, EPOs can feel disconnected from survivors’ lived experiences and ineffective as a protective tool. This can reinforce a cycle of silence and violence rooted in intergenerational trauma and systemic failure.
What’s the solution? EPOs could be a meaningful tool in the NWT but only if they are backed by responsive enforcement, trauma-informed service delivery, and community-specific implementation. Instead, survivors currently face a patchwork system where access to justice and safety depends on where you live and how far you can travel.
A future where survivors do not have to choose between safety and survival is possible, but it will require political will, reliable funding, and Indigenous leadership. We must stop placing the burden on survivors to navigate broken systems. Instead, responses must be immediate, compassionate, and informed by the lived experiences of those they are meant to protect. Only then can EPOs be taken more seriously and not dismissed as “a joke” (CBC News 2021, para 1).
The path forward must be shaped by those most affected. Safety should not depend on how far you are from services, whether you can afford to leave, or your willingness to suffer in silence. Every woman in the NWT deserves a real pathway to safety that is timely, accessible, and rooted in dignity. This should not be an exception. It should be a right.
Kaylee Del Frari is a Master’s student at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.
References
CBC News. “Court orders to prevent domestic violence “a joke” to abusers, N.W.T. report finds,” 2021. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/domestic-abuse-orders ineffective-nwt-1.5892262.
Conroy, Shana. “Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile, 2019,” 2021. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/85-002-x/2021001/article/00001- eng.pdf?st=5CeGeCHe.
FWCO Management Consultants Ltd. Victim Services Program Evaluation Final Report, 2020. https://www.justice.gov.nt.ca/en/files/victim
services/Victim%20Services%20Program%20Evaluation%20Final%20Report%20-%20Apr il%2030%2C%202020.pdf
Government of Northwest Territories. Annual Report 2017-2018 NWT Health and Social Services System, 2018. https://www.hss.gov.nt.ca/sites/hss/files/resources/hss-annual report-2017-18.pdf.
Moffitt, Pertice, Heather Fikowski, Marshirette Mauricio, and Anne Mackenzie. “Intimate Partner Violence in the Canadian Territorial North: Perspectives from a Literature Review and a Media Watch.” International Journal of Circumpolar Health 72 (1), 2013. doi:10.3402/ijch.v72i0.21209
Moffitt, Pertice and Heather Fikowski. Hearing about the Realities of Intimate Partner Violence in the Northwest Territories from Frontline Service Providers: Final Report, 2017. https://nwtresearch.com/sites/default/files/intimate_partner_violence_- _final_report.pdf
Moffitt, Pertice, Debby Rybchinski, Heather Fikowski, and Lyda Fuller. The Nature of Emergency Protection Orders (EPOs) in the Northwest Territories, Canada: A Case Study, 2020. https://www.ywcanwt.ca/_files/ugd/1eb237_63f4369eb061487e816ae8dc502c1c05.pd f.
Protection Against Family Violence Act, SNWT 2003, c 24. https://canlii.ca/t/564qn
Status of Women Council NWT. We Hear You, 2020.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/582dea07c534a53a91dae0de/t/5f8f64f95bb3e8 1970bc5fe8/1603233044357/We+Hear+You.pdf
Women and Gender Equality Canada. “Fact sheet: Intimate Partner Violence,” 2025. https://www.canada.ca/en/women-gender-equality/gender-based-violence/intimate partner-violence.html