Tatiana Kovalchuk: The issue of overcoming gender violence needs urgent legislative settlement
This was announced today, April 4, by the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Tatiana Kovalchuk during a meeting with the international advisor of UN Women Eileen Skinner.
“The Ministry of Internal Affairs initiates a large number of projects aimed at implementing an adequate response to gender-based violence by law enforcement agencies, but this is impossible without adequate legislation that takes into account all the peculiarities and challenges of our time. The issue of overcoming gender violence needs urgent legislative settlement,” Tatiana Kovalchuk stressed.
She added that the introduction of a gender approach in absolutely all spheres of activity of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is a priority of reforming the bodies of the civil security sector and the paramilitary National Guard.
“Ukraine signed the Istanbul Convention (Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence) back in 2011, but has not ratified it since. The document emphasizes that it is the duty of every democratic European state to completely eradicate violence in all its forms, as well as to create a system to prevent violence against women and to properly punish perpetrators,” the Deputy Minister of the Interior said.
UN Women International Advisor Eileen Skinner noted the significant progress of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in addressing the problem of gender-based violence, in particular by launching mobile police teams to counter domestic violence POLINA.
“The example of how the Ministry of Internal Affairs involved law enforcement officers, social workers, representatives of international associations and lawyers in a unified process deserves respect. POLINA is showing very good performance,” she said.
Tatiana Kovalchuk said that currently the Ministry of Internal Affairs is working on scaling the project of mobile police groups of this type to the entire territory of the state.
At the end of the meeting, the parties agreed to involve UN experts in the formation of the gender policy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
