On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (25 November) and the beginning of the global 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign, the Ministry of Justice would like to point to the fact that over 166,000 cases of domestic violence have been reviewed since the June 2017 enactment of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act.
In nearly a three-and-a-half-year period (June 2017–October 2020), 51,823 individual plans for victim protection and support were developed by coordination and cooperation groups which had been formed for every territory under the jurisdiction of a basic public prosecutor’s office. Public prosecutors filed 61,249 motions for the extension of urgent protection measures, 60,055 of which were granted by courts.
In parallel, the criminal-law protection of women was significantly advanced through the introduction of four new criminal offences into Serbia’s penal system: stalking, sexual harassment, genital mutilation and forced marriage. There were 130 convictions for stalking and 84 convictions for sexual harassment.
In April 2020, Ministry of Justice issued a recommendation that coordination and cooperation groups should move their meetings online. To that end, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) supported the launch of a pilot project in eight basic public prosecutor’s offices to help organise the groups’ meetings via the Zoom application. The purpose of these efforts has been to ensure the provision of comprehensive and full protection to domestic violence victims during the current pandemic caused by the coronavirus, while following all recommendations aimed at curbing its spread.
The Ministry of Justice calls on the competent state authorities to engage even more intensively in the fight against domestic violence in order to prevent its escalation and cases resulting in death.