Women Are Not Only Victims of Domestic Violence, but Also of Laws and Institutions
In the past five years in Macedonia, 28 murders have been recorded as domestic violence. The Ministry of Interior’s daily bulletins are filled with incidents in which women—wives, girlfriends—are beaten. In just the first six months of this year, the police filed criminal charges against a total of 388 individuals for domestic violence. In as many as 94 percent of the cases, the perpetrators were men. Civil society organizations have been warning for years that while laws exist on paper, there is a lack of an integrated system of institutions to address this problem. The Government announced that it would work to resolve this issue by ratifying the Istanbul Convention, an international document obligating states to take all measures to protect victims of domestic violence and punish the perpetrators.
This story was produced within the framework of the project “Reporting on Civil Society and Its Influence on Changes in Society”, implemented by the Macedonian Institute for Media in partnership with the Center for Investigative Journalism – SCOOP Macedonia, with financial support from the Civica Mobilitas program.
