On 12 July 2019, the Council of Europe organised a final workshop in Sarajevo with national authorities, legal professionals and other key stakeholders to present and discuss the main results of the project “Raising BiH Institutional Capacity to Prevent and Combat Violence against Women and Domestic Violence”.
The findings from the new 2019 Report, Administrative Data Collection on Violence against Women and Domestic Violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina were presented. This report, drafted by Dr. Carol Hagemann-White and Gorana Mlinarevic, examines the current system of administrative data collection on violence against women and domestic violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Recommendations were produced to support efforts by national authorities to establish a functional system of data collection and analysis of violence against women in line with the standards of the Istanbul Convention. Relevant documents, including Ensuring data collection and research: Article 11 of the Istanbul Convention, were translated and distributed to participants in order to inform discussions.
This event contributed to reinforcing the knowledge of relevant BiH agencies as regards administrative data collection on all forms of violence against women, in view of upcoming reporting obligations in 2020 toward the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO). Bosnia and Herzegovina ratified the Istanbul Convention in November 2013 and it entered into force in August 2014.
The final workshop also served to present the main outcomes of the Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) course on Violence against Women, which trained 53 lawyers from Bosnia and Herzegovina on overcoming the shortcomings of judicial proceedings in cases of violence against women.
Participants of the workshop included representatives of the main national gender equality mechanism, the Agency for Gender Equality of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Gender Centre of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska, the Law Chamber of Republika Srpska, the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of canton Sarajevo, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the OSCE, UN Women and the Council of Europe.
The project, Raising BiH Institutional Capacity to Prevent and Combat Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, contributes to the national implementation of the Council of Europe Gender Equality Strategy and the 2018 – 2021 Council of Europe Action Plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The project was funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
