On the occasion of the International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women, Praxis expresses satisfaction because the Republic of Serbia has ratified the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.

CE Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence is the most comprehensive international treaty in this field. It calls on states to work on prevention and combat violence against women. This means that states are obliged to organize their response to all forms of violence covered by the Convention, so that the authorities may conscientiously prevent, investigate and punish the committed acts of violence. If they fail, the states are responsible for acts of violence.

According to the data of the network Women against Violence, from the beginning of the year until 21 November 2013, a total of 41 women were killed. All killed women knew the perpetrators, and in some cases violence was reported even before a woman was killed.

The Convention recognizes and pays special attention to multiply discriminated groups of women, such as migrants, refugees, Roma and others, starting from the fact that often, because of their residence status, they may be excluded from the support services. The specificity of such population groups is the fact that such persons have already experienced forced living of their homes or they are facing the extremely difficult social exclusion and marginalization. Some of them live in collective centres where living conditions are extremely difficult, some in unrecognized collective centres, and most of displaced members of Roma live in informal settlements. They are in a difficult economic and social situation, and their economic vulnerability sometimes affects their decision to leave their husbands more reluctantly. Their vulnerability is also reflected in the fact that they come from post-conflict areas, because an abuser’s threat causes a much greater trauma if he possesses a weapon.

Within the adoption of the Convention, the activities aimed at protection of women from violence are not completed. On the contrary, they have just started. The process of harmonization of domestic legislation with the Convention is ahead of us, in order to build a more efficient system of protection of victims and prosecution of perpetrators.

In this regard, we are calling upon the state to urgently initiate the harmonization of domestic legislation with the provisions of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.