Women's organizations within the network WAVE - Women of Europe against violence, today launched the European campaign "Step up! - Stand up!", during which the rights of women victims of violence and their children will be promoted for the next two years with the aim of better support and protection.
The WAVE network consists of 46 organizations from Europe, and in Montenegro non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are members: SOS phone for women and children victims of violence Nikšić, Safe Women's House, Center for Women's Rights and SOS phone for women and children victims of violence Podgorica, Anima from Kotor and Strong Mom.
The representative of the NGO SOS Telephone Nikšić, Ivana Pejović, said that the main task of women's organizations during the campaign is to invite all citizens to come forward together with them and help women and children who are victims of violence receive more adequate support.
"Our task is to gather women's organizations and together with them promote the rights of women victims of violence and their children, and to appeal to decision makers to invest more in specialized support and assistance services so that the protection of victims of domestic violence is at a better and higher quality level ", said Pejović on Independence Square.
The organization's task, as she clarified, is to base itself on better investment in specialized help and support services for women victims of violence, as well as to provide more favorable access to specialized services in Montenegro.
The executive director of the NGO SOS telephone Podgorica, Biljana Zeković, said that the campaign aims to inform the public about everything that happens in the institutions of the system and in the NGO sector, and it concerns the rights of women victims of violence and their children.
"This means that over the next two years, we will continuously inform about the rights of victims of domestic violence, about the actions of institutions, about the possibilities that exist related to the protection of victims of domestic violence, and we will do a lot of initiatives in terms of improving the situation, relations in institutions and better and better quality services Zeković said.
According to him, it is necessary to continue to run these services by NGOs "because practice has shown that organizations that deal with women's rights have an exclusive focus on women and the family".
"This time we will not have a campaign that will last one, two, 15, 16 days, but we will try to continuously provide all information for the public to see, because we think that only continuous action can produce results. We expect the support of the media here," said Zeković.
The executive director of the NGO Safe Women's House, Ljiljana Raičević, believes that it is time to point to the Istanbul Convention that Montenegro signed and which, as she stated, contains all these messages that women's organizations have been following since last year.
"This is an important message - that Montenegro knows that there are women's groups that will monitor the work of state bodies and participate in their implementation. In a way, "pushing" those institutions to do their work as prescribed by the laws that the state signed and committed to," Raičević said.
She stated that this should be done not only through campaigns, but also through the education of judges, prosecutors and police officers, reminding that they monitor the work of the police through various committees and have good cooperation with them.
"The biggest problem here is understanding the phenomenon of violence against women and children, and the big problem is that they don't understand why the woman returns and why they "push" her back into violence with some of their reactions that are not welcome, such as - you have to listen, don't answer him, come back, try one more time", believes Raičević.
It is necessary, she believes, to leave the woman to decide for herself, but she should be told what her rights are.
The representative of the Center for Women's Rights, Ana Jaredić, pointed to the fact that in Montenegro there are several organizations that deal with women's rights, and that each has a significant number of women victims of violence, assessing that this is an indicator that more work should be done on the services they provide support.
"Women still don't have such good treatment that they would be satisfied with, because they mostly turn to us after trying to fight for their rights on their own. So the promotion of the rights of women who are victims of violence is always necessary, no matter how much it seems to citizens that it is something that is talked about enough," said Jaredić.
The Center for Women's Rights, as she recalled, provides initial counseling services, legal assistance and representation, and psychological assistance.
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