2nd December 2019
21 European equality bodies contributed to the new policy paper on gender-based violence, published by the European Network of Equality Bodies (Equinet). It covers issues of gender-based harrasement, violence and hate speech, bringing insights how to tackle it institutionally.
Equinet Paper “Tackling Violence against Women and Gender-Based Violence” is a result of the work of the Equinet Project on Tackling Violence against Women (2017-2018) and the Working Group on Gender Equality.
It looks at the legal frameworks governing the issue of violence against women, and how equality bodies can contribute to and best engage with these frameworks. It gathers examples of good practice by equality bodies, focusing on: promotional activities, surveys, recommendations, trainings and cooperation. It also highlights cases from equality bodies.
The section of “Good Practice Examples by Equality Bodies” includes a case from Lithuania as well:
The Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson of Lithuania within the project “Stop violence Against Women: From (A)wareness to (Z)ero Victims Blaming” organised three awareness raising campaigns toward the general public. The first one (titled “Perfect Family. This is (also) Violence”) points out different forms of violence to show that it is not always physical. The next one (“Support”) calls to stop victim-blaming, and the last one (“Women for Women”) addresses solidarity among women who suffered from domestic violence. The awareness raising activities also included media monitoring and direct mailing to journalists when a victim-blaming article is detected. All the campaigns attracted wide public attention and proved to be successful when done intensively one after another.
Full paper in English can be found here.