In Ukraine policewomen unit will fight against domestic violence

The Ministry of Interior Affairs of Ukraine will create a female police unit to fight family violence.

As reported by “Ukrainian News”, this was stated by Anastasia Deyeva, the Deputy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs during a press conference.

“We are starting new project to create a network of female police officers to fight against domestic violence”, – she said.

Deyeva gave no further details.

As a reminder, on Novermber 21, Human Rights Information Centre has sent an appeal individually to each deputy of the Verkhovna Rada concerning the delay in the ratification of the Convention of the Council of Europe on the prevention of violence against women and domestic violence and fight against these occurrences (the Istanbul Convention).

The reason for the appeal was the vote on November 17 in the Verkhovna Rada of the draft law “On Prevention of Domestic Violence”, during which several deputies demanded to remove terms “gender” and “sexual orientation” for the approval of the bill.

The authors of the appeal consider the removal of said terms to be unacceptable, as they explain the important causes of gender-based violence and in the civilized world these terms have already became legal.

The long-awaited ratification of the Istanbul Convention, which was signed by Ukraine in 2011, has not happened on November 17. This Convention attracted the attention of International Partners of Ukraine and first of all attracted the attention of women of Ukraine, citizens of Ukraine, female fugitives and asylum seekers, women without documents, which proves their identity and whose rights Ukraine has undertaken to comply.

According to the National Police and the Ministry of Social Policy, in 2016 National Police has received 127,478 calls on the facts of domestic violence. Of these, 982 calls were made by children. Pre-trial investigations were started in 5,303 cases.