Tatiana Kovalchuk: The principle of zero tolerance to domestic violence is an indicator of a developed society
This was announced today, on December 18, during the discussion “POLINA — an integrated approach to combating domestic violence”.
Representatives of the National Police, Deputy Minister of Social Policy Natalia Fedorovich, Government Commissioner for Gender Policy Kateryna Levchenko, Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Verkhovna Rada Irina Lutsenko, and international partners also participated in the event. The discussion was organized jointly with the OSCE Project Coordinator in Ukraine.
Tatiana Kovalchuk stressed that the implementation of the principle of zero tolerance to domestic violence is an indicator of the maturity of society.
“State structures, and especially law enforcement agencies, must ensure an effective response to cases of violence in view of the new legislation, which will enter into force on January 11, 2019. This is the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to the Criminal and Criminal Procedural Codes of Ukraine in order to implement the provisions of the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence and Combating These Phenomena. According to him, domestic violence will become a criminal offense,” the deputy interior minister said.
She also recalled that the Ministry of the Interior launched mobile groups to combat domestic violence called “POLINA”.
“Kyiv, Odessa and Severodonetsk became the first cities in Ukraine where this pilot project was implemented. We are currently working on scaling it to the whole country,” added Tetiana Kovalchuk.
The representative of the UN Population Fund in Ukraine, Caspar Peek, said: “Ukraine has made tremendous progress, if you take into account what legislation has been adopted, interagency coordination, the fact that there are already shelters in many areas, hotlines that are functioning and there are POLINA, of course. This is an initiative that will only grow. All actors show a willingness to work on this problem.”
The head of the department of district officers of the National Police Sergey Aleshkin said that since the beginning of 2018, the National Police has investigated 844 criminal proceedings for offenses committed in the family environment.
“Since the beginning of the POLINA project in three regions, mobile groups have made almost 4.5 thousand trips and conducted more than two thousand preventive conversations,” he added.
Government Commissioner for Gender Policy Kateryna Levchenko noted that the problem of domestic violence is a problem of gender discrimination and is also a problem that belongs to the competence of government officials.
The representative of the OSCE Project Coordinator in Ukraine Lilia Hrudko assured that the organization will continue to support the initiatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs towards the establishment of a safe environment.
Honored Artist of Ukraine Irma Vitovska focused her attention on the fact that the issue of domestic violence is directly related to the loss of cultural value of a citizen.
“In our society, the cultural and intellectual value of the citizen has been lost. Cases of violence in all spheres testify to this,” she added.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
Photo by Andriy Novitsky
