On the occasion of marking May 18, the Day of remembrance of Women Victims of Violence, a coordinator of the SOS service of IZ KRUGA VOJVODINA, Ivana Zelic, spoke at the tribune Institutional handling of high-risk domestic violence cases. The tribune was held in Novi Sad organized by the Autonomous Women’s Center.
Forty representatives of institutions for protection against violence (social work centers, prosecutor’s offices, lower and higher courts, police, health institutions), the Provincial Ombudsman and the Provincial Secretariat for Social Policy, Demography and Gender Equality and representatives of other institutions and organizations providing specialized support services for women exposed to violence attended the tribune.
Ivana Zelic talked about reporting domestic violence to competent institutions from the point of view of women with disabilities based on their experience.
– The most common obstacles women with disabilities face when they decide to report violence are lack of financial means, fear of inadequate response of institutions to violence, escalation of violence and inaccessibility of competent institutions. In addition to usual forms of violence, women with disabilities are exposed to subtler and hardly identifiable forms of violence. For these reasons, it is significant that professionals working with women with disabilities know how to recognize violence and work on reevaluating their stands and values about gender-based violence and disability – said Ivana Zelic.
Apart from Ivana Zelic, the following spoke at the tribune: Vedrana Lacmanovic, Autonomous Women’s Center; Tanja Ignjatovic, Autonomous Women’s Center and Slobodan Josimovic, Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad. The moderator of the forum was Milica Jeremic.
The aim of the tribune was to exchange the experience of the professionals about challenges working with women exposed to violence, learning to recognize and eliminate the risk of severe harming or fatal outcomes and give recommendations for their overcoming.
