On the 1st of December within the frames of the worldwide campaign “16 active days against violence” Minsk has succeeded the launch of the technical assistance project "Strengthening national capacity to counteract gender-based violence (with focus on domestic violence) in the Republic of Belarus".
The Launch-event was attended by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr. Nikolay Melchenko, Country Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Belarus, Mr. Caspar Peek, Ambassador Extraodinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Mrs. Fiona Gibb, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom od Sweden, Mr. Martin Oberg, representatives of the field-oriented Ministries and offices, agencies of the United Nations, diplomatic corps, international organizations and NGOs.
All the participants to the event has highlighted the actual continuity of the implementation of that very project in the Republic of Belarus.
Deputy Minister of the Internal Affairs, Mr. Nikolay Melchenko has indicated, that due to the successful execution of the relevant projects dd yy. 2012 – 2015 now we see a great opportunity to reach impressive results in the area of counteraction the domestic violence. Nevertheless, there is still much more to proceed with, as soon as still the number of domestic violence issues hasn’t been settled and covered by the local legislation. Therefore, there is a need to implement all the related national holdings while applying the international experience and best-practice in regards to to full-scale responsiveness of all the state authorities and NGOs to the facts of the domestic violence.
As it was marked up Country Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Belarus, Mr. Caspar Peek, the gender based violence infringes the human rights and as a result country incurs the economic loss. “25% of women in the world has been exposed to the different forms of violence. We are to root it out. We need to change the society attitude to violence”.
Ambassador Extraodinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Mrs. Fiona Gibb, stressed that the issue of domestic violence has a global outcome. And Great Britain is not an exception. The joining of the efforts of the state field-related agencies, NGOs, and the experts is a key factor in the problem solving process. Mrs. Fionna Gibb additionally has emphasized the role of the media within the process of messaging of that very issue to the society. As an example Mrs. Gibb has commented on the radio-show, broadcasted by BBC, which was covering the problematic of topic of male-aggressors and valid cases of DV. Upon the finalization of the radio-show broad-casting the crisis hotlines were reached by more than 20 thousands of women, who realized that there were suffering the acts of domestic violence on daily basis, however prior they didn’t consider it to be important topic for discussion and consideration.
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom od Sweden, Mr. Martin Oberg, has drew the attention to the mutual efforts in relation to the settlement of the domestic violence problematic. As the best practice Mr. Oberg shared positive experience of Sweden in this regards (Swedish legislation system includes the Law on prevention DV, which determines the systematic DV as capital offence).
The Project Manager, Mrs. Marina Ananenko has specified that elaboration of Comprehensive Law on Domestic Violence, development and institutionalization of national mechanisms on comprehensive response to domestic violence, engaging professional group of judiciaries, representatives of prosecutor’s offices and Healthcare agencies as well as strengthening of the model of work with domestic violence offenders/aggressors make up the top priorities of the project realization. Reinforcement of the society zero tolerance to gender based violence (with focus on domestic violence), especially in relation to women, comprises the list of the expected key results to the project.
