The Commissioner for the Protection of Equality participated in the Regional Conference entitled “Implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence”, held from November 10 to 12 at Jahorina, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Serbia was among the first to ratify the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (back in 2013), after which the Law on Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Law on Amendments to the Criminal Code were passed. However, despite very significant improvements, the normative framework is still not fully harmonized with the Istanbul Convention, said Brankica Janković.

The commissioner added that the improved legal framework did not lead to a reduction in domestic violence but did encourage women to report it more. This indicates that it is important to talk about the causes and reasons of gender-based violence, which are primarily deep-rooted gender-based discrimination, patriarchal model of relations in society and stereotypes about the subordinate role of women. What is worrying is that young people also easily adopt our “rich history” of discriminatory attitudes towards women, concluded Janković.

The regional conference in which, among others, the director of the Agency for Gender Equality in Bosnia and Herzegovina Samra Filipović-Hadžiabdić and the ombudswoman for gender equality in the Republic of Croatia Višnja Ljubičić took part, is being held within the project “Strengthening the capacity of institutions to address gender-based violence in BiH”.