How does the law on Domestic Violence Prevention work in Georgia?

A conference on “Combating Domestic Violence in Armenian and Georgian Experience” was held in Yerevan on the initiative of the Coalition to Stop Violence against Women, in the framework of which representatives of Armenia and Georgia discussed the successful experience of improving the legislative field and existing challenges in both countries. WomenNet.am interviewed human rights activists from Georgia to find out how the law on domestic violence is working over there.

The number of women who apply to law enforcement agencies is growing

It should be noted that the law “On Domestic Violence Prevention and the Protection and Assistance to the victims of Domestic Violence” was adopted in 2006. Over the past ten years, the law has been repeatedly revised, and since 2012, domestic violence has been criminalized in Georgia. Touching upon the issue of the response to the criminalization proposal of the law by the public, Anne Lobjanidze, Senior Officer of the Gender Equality Unit of the Georgian Human Rights Defender’s Office noted that the road was complicated because the authorities did not recognize that domestic violence was not just domestic the problem but the problem of the public, and only after that they managed to achieve the point that it should be criminalized. And if the adoption of the law at the first stage raised the level of public awareness and has created a more solid ground for speaking about this issue, criminalization was also crucial for condemning the phenomenon and punishing those guilty.

“The biggest gap was that some parts of society had a serious contrast that the government has no right to enter the family and criminalize the penalties for domestic violence. But criminalization was necessary”, she emphasized.

Full text in Armenian