“Adopting a gender-sensitive approach when measuring and monitoring access to justice highlights the challenges that women and girls face in accessing justice and paves the way towards developing justice policies and practices that address the needs and rights of women.”

This was one of the main conclusions of an international seminar organised in Ankara on 24 October 2022 in the framework of the European Union and Council of Europe’s joint action on “Fostering women’s access to justice in Turkey”, having brought together representatives of the relevant national ministries, the Union of Turkish Bar Associations, local bar associations and legal aid centres, public institutions and agencies, international and national judicial authorities and experts, universities and research centres, as well as non-governmental organisations working in the field of women's rights.

Alexander Fricke, Head of Section of Civil Society, Fundamental Rights, Judiciary and Home Affairs, Delegation of the European Union to Turkey noted that “Gender equality is a priority issue in the context of the European Union's external relations. I am convinced that achieving tengible results in the context of the project on “Fostering Women’s Access to Justice in Turkey” and other gender equality focused projects make important contributions to ensuring full access to justice for women. During its implementation, the project has achieved important outputs in identifying barriers and possible solutions to women's access to justice and this seminar on measuring and monitoring women's access to justice is be an other valuable input to these results.”

In his remarks, President of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations Atty. Erinç Sağkan stated that “As the Union of Turkish Bar Associations women's rights and combating discrimination against women are among our priority areas of work. Within the framework of the action on "Fostering Women's Access to Justice in Turkey" we provided legal aid services to over 250 women and provided specialised training to 264 colleagues. We are at the very beginning of the struggle for women's access to justice in Turkey. We are struggling in an environment that tries to withdraw women from the public sphere and imposes restrictions on private life. For this reason, these projects are of great importance to support the existing women's movement and struggle.”

During the seminar, participants shared practices for measuring and monitoring women’s access to justice and discussed how to improve those methods to better identify and eliminate obstacles for women and disadvantaged groups and ensure equal access to justice for all, in line with international and European standards.

This seminar was organised in the framework of the action on “Fostering women's access to justice in Turkey”, part of the European Union and Council of Europe’s joint programme entitled "Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022".

 Agenda of the seminar