Rehabilitation Program for Perpetrators of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence Underway
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There is growing evidence that working with male perpetrators - alongside intervention and protection for women - is essential to reducing domestic violence. Moreover, Perpetrator programs are increasingly acknowledged as a key gap in effective service delivery.
On December 4-8, 2017, UN Women in partnership with the Ministry of Corrections and Probations of Georgia and with the generous support of the European Union conducted a workshop on development of Rehabilitation Program for Perpetrators of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.
The workshop aimed at drafting the rehabilitation programme for perpetrators of violence against women and domestic violence and building capacity of national actors, including the representatives of the Ministry of Corrections and Probation and the local non-governmental organizations on implementing rehabilitation programs in line with internationally established standards and best practices.
The initiative is set out to address the key gap in delivery of preventive interventions and treatment programs for the perpetrators of VAWG/DV, a commitment undertaken by the government of Georgia under the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combatting Violence against Women and Domestic Violence ratified by Georgia in June 2017.
The program drafting process is complemented by the efforts to introduce legislative amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure and Code of Administrative Procedure to ensure that the rehabilitation programme is used as an alternative sentence for domestic violence perpetrators and/or a pre-condition for parole, as well as one of the restrictive conditions under a protective order. The draft legislative amendments have already been drafted with UN Women’s technical support and will be submitted to Gender Equality Council of the Parliament of Georgia for further discussion and initiation by the end of 2017.
The initiative is supported within the framework of the “Unite to Fight Violence against Women” project - a three-year multi-pronged action funded by the European Union and implemented by UN Women aiming at preventing violence against women and domestic violence and eliminating its causes and consequences in Georgia.