Building a society with ZERO TOLERANCE for domestic violence

undpeuropeandcis shared byon Apr 19

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Over the past decade, FYR Macedonia has taken signifcant steps to tackle the problem of domestic violence, demonstrating its commitment to building a society with zero-tolerance for such crime. It rec... ently became one of the first countries to sign the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women. Despite this progress, domestic and gender-based violence remains a serious issue in the country. The first ever baseline survey carried out in 2012 by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and the UN, shows that almost 40% of women in the country have been subject to some form of domestic violence. Furthermore, research showed that the social stigma attached to domestic violence means that many victims remain silent and continue to live in fear, with over three quarters of incidents not reported to any of the publicly available services. The UN agencies in the country have been working closely with national institutions and civil society organizations over recent years to help implement the National Strategy on Domestic Violence. Just recently, UNDP and UN Women in partnership with national institutions, started a new project titled ‘A better legal framework for supporting victims of domestic violence’. This project, funded by the Kingdom of Netherlands, has as overall objective to increase the accountability and transparency of the judicial system and to improve the legal services for victims of domestic violence.

Publisher UNDP

