Over the course of two days, on 3 and 4 November 2022, 15 participants were provided with essential tools to draft a multi-agency cooperation plan for combating violence against women and domestic violence. These sessions follow the two initial sessions that took place in October.

Participants included representatives from the State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs, the Ombudsperson’s Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Population, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and civil society. They discussed the prerequisites of multi-agency work, the roles of different agencies and stakeholders, activities, structures, functions, and co-operation. They also looked into cooperation in relation to data collection. As a result of these discussions, a draft plan on multi-agency cooperation covering all comments and suggestions by the participants will be prepared by the expert.

These sessions were planned in alignment with international standards, including with Article 15 of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention), which encourages the training of relevant professionals dealing with victims or perpetrators on coordinated multi-agency co-operation to “allow for a comprehensive and appropriate handling of referrals in cases of violence.”

These capacity-building sessions were organised under the project “Raising awareness of the Istanbul Convention and other gender equality standards in Azerbaijan,” funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in their Partnership for Good Governance II 2019-2022.