Towards the Rehabilitation Program for Perpetrators of intimate-partner violence
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UN Women in partnership with the European Union has been supporting the Government of Georgia in introducing a rehabilitation programme for perpetrators of intimate partner violence within the penitentiary system.
Throughout 2017 and 2018, UN Women partnered with the Ministry of Corrections and Probation in developing a rehabilitation programme for perpetrators of intimate partner violence against women for convicted offenders on probation and in custody. The programme is based on the Spanish model “GBV - Intervention Programme for the Rehabilitation of Perpetrators”, selected by UN Women and the Government of Georgia as one of the most successful models of its kind worldwide. In line with these efforts, from 4 to 8 September 2018, UN Women in partnership with the Ministry of Justice of Georgia conducted a training of trainers for therapists working in the penitentiary system to build their capacity on delivering the rehabilitation programme. The trainers will train all therapists to be engaged in the delivery of the programme throughout the country in October 2018, to be followed by piloting the programme in a selected penitentiary and throughout the probation system.
“The programme will serve the purpose of helping inmates with a history of committing gender-based violence to understand violence directed at other people, acquire new skills for the management of disputes and conflicts without violence and aggression, learn partner relations and manage to express their feelings in a constructive manner,” noted Nino Tkeshelashvili, representative of the National Probation Agency and a training participant.
The capacity development interventions are complemented by the efforts to introduce legislative amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offences of Georgia to ensure that the rehabilitation programme is used as an additional sentence for intimate partner violence against women, as well as one of the restrictive conditions under protective orders. The draft legislative amendments have already been developed with UN Women’s technical support, to be further discussed by the Gender Equality Council of the Parliament of Georgia for initiation by the end of 2018.
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.