TIRANA, March 8 /ATA/ On International Women’s Day, the Ombudsperson Institution, in partnership with UN Women, launched the “Femicide Watch” initiative.
The first of its kind, this initiative will collect and analyze data in order to improve policies and mechanisms to prevent the killing of women and girls.
Aiming for a comprehensive discussion on the issues of femicide in Albania and the need to improve inter-institutional cooperation in order to prevent and take effective measures, participants in this roundtable were high personalities at the central and local level, high authorities of the judicial system, organizations of civil society and international organizations that focus on issues of gender equality and the fight against gender-based violence.
In her remarks at the opening of this meeting, the Ombudsperson said among other things: “I believe that we should take an initiative together, first to guarantee the definition of “femicide” as a criminal offense, to come up with a clear definition and incorporate it in the new Criminal Code, and for this I have received the assurance from the Criminal Code working group that such a thing will be reflected. On the other hand, we must be clear that only by collecting accurate and comparable data on a given crime will we be able to fully understand the causes and reasons why it happened, how it happened and what we can do to prevent them. The femicide watch that we, with the help of our very important partner UN WOMEN, are putting into practice will be of service to get to this point. It was an idea that has been discussed with them for a year, because the launch of femicide watch in other member countries of the entire United Nations Organization, but also in some countries of the Council of Europe, has helped identify problems, but also address them.”
“Violence is not eliminated if we fall silent!”, was the message with which the Ombudsperson concluded today’s meeting.
The Ombudsperson expressed special gratitude for the clear will expressed by the public authorities to establish this new institutional partnership.
