During the public hearing on the Action Plan Proposal for the period 2024-2026 for the implementation of the Strategy for the creation of a stimulating environment for the development of the civil sector in the Republic of Serbia for the period 2022-2030, on behalf of women's organizations, the Network of Women Against Violence sent an Open Letter to the Minister, to the Sector for Cooperation with Civil Society and to the Council for the Creation of an Encouraging Environment for the Development of Civil Society. The immediate reason for this is serious security threats to women from organizations in the south of Serbia.
Seven years after the start of the implementation of the Law on Prevention of Domestic Violence, a central data record has not yet been established, nor is there a publicly available report that integrates data from different sources. The Autonomous Women's Center has been collecting data and preparing reports since the beginning of the implementation of the Law. In 2023, 28,413 incidents of domestic violence were registered, the most in the period 2018-2022. Men were the most frequent perpetrators of domestic violence (82.8%), and among the victims, women were dominantly represented (71.8%).
The period covered by this Report – from November 2023 to April 2024 – was marked by the extraordinary parliamentary and local elections, which caused the Government to spend this entire time in a technical mandate. As Serbia had three parliamentary elections in the last five years, such a situation didn’t seem unusual.
The prEUgovor coalition reacts to the content of Prime Minister Miloš Vučević’s exposé presented on 1 May 2024, offering recommendations in selected key areas it regularly monitors with Serbia’s European integration process.
The Autonomous Women's Center submitted information to the competent Ministry and professional bodies in social protection, as well as to all social welfare centers, about the problematic promotion of the concept of "equal parenting", as well as the related concepts of "parental alienation" and "high-conflict divorce" through conferences, professional meetings and education for professional workers in social welfare centers, in reaction to the information from Slovenia.
Serbia spent the reporting period – from May to October 2023 – in a somewhat extraordinary state. Two mass murders among minors and young people at the beginning of May traumatised Serbian society and prompted the Government to take a series of reactive measures that marginalised the planned reform activities. These tragic events exposed systemic failures in the country presented the most terrible consequences of fostering a culture of verbal and physical violence in public space, and initiated protests and demands for accountability, which the Government partly ignored and partly attacked. The end of October, on the other hand, also marked the anniversary of the work of the Government, which then entered its technical mandate by announcing snap parliamentary elections on 17 December 2023.
The European Commission's (EC) Report on Serbia was published on November 8 as part of the broader European Union enlargement package, which now includes a total of ten countries. The prEUgovor coalition highlights and comments on its key findings in the areas it regularly monitors. The Report shows that, over the past nine years, Serbia has only slightly increased its readiness for EU membership and consistently stagnates half-way on the reform path. In critical areas covered by chapters 23 and 24 (judiciary, fight against corruption, freedom of expression, fight against organised crime), it received a rating of 2 out of 5, which is the same as in the previous year.
In nine years, Serbia has only slightly increased the level of readiness for membership in the European Union and is persistently standing in the middle of the reform path. In critical areas from Chapters 23 and 24 (judiciary, fight against corruption, freedom of expression, fight against organized crime) it received an unchanged score of 2 out of 5.
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, issued the Report after her visit to Serbia on March 13-17, 2023 with recommendations that focus on transitional justice, freedom of expression and association, as well as women's rights and gender equality. Along with recognition for strengthening the legislation and public policy framework for gender equality in the previous period, she called for redoubled efforts in the fight against persistent gender discriminatory stereotypes that contribute to the repetition of gender-based violence.
Ten women's civil society organizations from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Montenegro, which deal with providing support to women who have survived violence, sent a letter of support to Professor Robert Geffner - an American clinical psychologist with 40 years of experience in the field of domestic violence, trauma and psychological and sexual abuse of children.
The latest confirmation of the unacceptability of the usage of the "parental alienation" concept, and its harmful consequences comes from the GREVIO expert group (which monitors the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, ratified by the Republic of Serbia in 2013), in the assessment to the Republic of Croatia (September 6, 2023).
