CLOSING CONFERENCE: Before women are great challenges - we need connections, solidarity and activism
Closing conference, dedicated to the monitoring of the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, was held on November 3, 2016 in Belgrade. The Conference was focused on support and empowerment of women who have experienced violence, application of the standards of the Convention, development of accessible, effective, efficient and comprehensive general and specialist support services for women and their children.
Representative of Autonomous Women’s CenterTanja Ignjatović participated in the Fourth National Conference of the Women’s Parliamentary Network (WPN), which was held on 4th of November 2016 in the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia. Participating in the working group “Women’s alliances in the fight for a better position of women in society”, she invited WPN to support amendments to the Draft Law on Prevention of Domestic Violence in order to get the best possible version of this law. She also invited the representatives of the WPN to jointly stop that the Criminal Code enter the parliamentary procedure, because there was no a public debate on 14 articles relating to compliance with the Council of Europe on Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.
On the invitation of the Ministry of Justice, representatives of the Autonomous Women’s Center, Vanja Macanovic and Vedrana Lacmanovic, met on November 7th with the Minister of Justice, Nela Kuburovic ,and Ministry representatives. On this occasion, the Minister, Nela Kuburovic, signed the petition calling for the proclamation of May 18th as the Day of Remembrance of Murdered Women Victims of Violence.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure and President of the Coordinating Body for Gender Equality, Zorana Mihajlovic, gave her support and signed the petition to proclaim May 18th the Day of Remembrance of Murdered Women Victims of Violence. She signed the petition at the Republic Square, in Belgrade.
The Commissioner for Protection of Equality, Brankica Jankovic, supported the petition to proclaim May 18th the Day of Remembrance of Murdered Women Victims of Violence. She put her signature on the petition at the Commissioner’s Office, as did all employees of this institution.
The PrEUgovor Coalition (Group 484, ASTRA, and AWC) presented their study “Migrants in Serbia Have Irregular Status – Current Issues and Perspectives” at the Media Center on October 31st 2016. The study makes an overview of the migrants irregular status and the state service’s response. The report in particularly focuses on women, identifying gender based violence and human trafficking risks.
At a press conference, held at the Media Center on October 31st, the PrEUgovor Coalition presented their independent report on advancements made by Serbia in implementing judicial and human rights policies (Chapter 23) and justice, freedom and security policies (Chapter 24).
During the press conference held on 17th of October in Media Center in Belgrade, Autonomous Women's Center and Women Against Violence Network officially started collecting signatures in support of a petition to designate May 18 - Day of Remembrance of the murdered women victims of violence. This date was chosen because in 2015, within a period of 72 hours, on the 16th, 17th and 18th of May, seven women were killed in domestic-partnership context. The first signatures of support were given by members of the families of women victims of femicide, and during the conference there were collected more than 80 signatures.
There are no statistics in Serbia, or even simple assessments, about the number of women who were raped during war. One of the first organizations that women could turn to for support at the time was the Autonomous Women’s Center against Sexual Violence which was established in 1993 in the aim of providing this much needed support. “The Autonomous Women’s Center against Sexual Violence was established so as to help provide emotional support to women who have survived sexual violence on war torn territories in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and later on in Kosovo. Many of these women remained in Serbia. From our experiences of working with women, we know that there are women who were raped by men of all nationalities”, noted Lepa Mladenovic.
Berlin, Germany: During the “Support and protection of child witnesses of domestic violence, particularly in relation to custody and visitation rights” panel, at the 18th WAVE conference, Tanja Ignjatovic and Vanja Macanovic from the Autonomous Women’s Center held a presentation titled “Visitation rights as a mechanism for mistreatment of children and abuse of women – how institutions respond to manipulation by perpetrators of violence”.
