Fight against sexual and gender based violence

By Jelena Jovanovic
Belgrade, Dec. 15 2009 (Serbia Today) - Ministry of Labor and Social Policy - The Department for Gender Equality started the project „Fight against sexual and gender based violence“ in 2009 with the financial support of the Government of the Kingdom of Norway, and with its professional and technical cooperation and support in ensuring the fulfillment of international standards by the United Nations.
The project that will last until 2011, is based on the national strategy for improving the position of women and promoting gender equality, on the international documents in the field of violence against women, and on the conclusions of the National conference on violence against women held in Serbia in 2007.
According to the data that can be found on the official web site of Serbian Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, the National Strategy for improving the position of women and gender equality (2009 - 2015), which was recently adopted by the Government of the Republic of Serbia, defined 6 priority topics. These topics were defined in the tune with needs of the State and in the accordance with the UN Committee recommendation on implementation of the Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.
Combating violence against women is recognized as one of the six highest priority in Serbia. In Serbian society there is a high tolerance for gender-based violence, and most victims are not aware of their rights. The system of collecting data on victims of sexual and gender based violence is not sufficiently developed. Various researches and experiences of civic organizations that provide services to victims of violence revealed high rates of psychical and psychological violence in Serbian society. ( The fact is also that the most of violent acts are never reported to the state institutions)
Beside these facts, in the official web site of Serbian Ministry of Labor , all details about the project ’Fight against sexual and gender based violence ’ are described. Main aims of this project are:
Strengthening the capacity of the Gender Equality within the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy; Developing capacity to create public policy related to the core and their implementation;
Introduction of uniform standards for collecting data on the core of the relevant institutions and development standards for the production of official statistics core in the relevant institutions; Improving horizontal and vertical coordination of stakeholders;
Improving access to victims of the corresponding core services;
Developing a set of recommendations for dealing with perpetrators of core programs and the introduction of the perpetrators and Raising awareness about the core.
It is particularly stressed that the main aim of this project was systematically providing help to all victims of violence - through State institutions and non government organizations – and stimulating institutions and organizations that provide such help.
Part of the project, organized in the cooperation with daily newspaper Danas from Belgrade, is the campaign adressed to the public. Its goal is to raise the level of the awareness in the society about violence against women and to remind on basic principles of gender equality.
In the articles , published in `Danas` since the mid November, various terms has been explained, as well as significant historical changes in the recent history. Some of the articles were about gender-based violence, sexual violence, discrimination, ageism (discrimination of the older persons) , misogyny (discrimination of women) ...
One of the articles reminded on the Day Against Violence Against Women and on the Council of Europe Recommendation from 2002. This recommendation provides a framework of measures to protect women from violence, especially domestic violence, as the most frequent form of gender-based violence.