The Ministers are discussing above all the breaking of silence concerning the matters of domestic violence. Their main goal is to move forward the works on the new draft convention of the Council of Europe on the basis of which it would be possible to fight domestic and other forms of violence committed against women, to protect and support victims of such violence and prosecute their offenders. In most national laws, domestic violence is already considered as punishable, however, it is still viewed rather as a problem of social, medical or gender inequality than a matter of justice.
The new instrument is being prepared by an ad hoc board of legal experts created on the basis of an initiative of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The convention will primarily focus on signs of violence against women, but all measures will be possible to apply also to other groups of domestic violence victims. This practically means that the instrument will represent a frame based on a gender concept of all treated forms of violence; the states will however be enabled to implement also its gender-neutral form. A report on this form of the instrument will be submitted to the Council of Ministers after the summer holidays and at the beginning of autumn first draft text of the prepared convention will be produced.
"I very much welcome the information on activities of the Council of Europe in this area and on the first meetings of the working group dealing with the new draft convention. Personally, I truly believe that this new tool will help to strenghten the protection and help for all victims of domestic violence, regardless of their gender, age or sexual orientation. We have been discussing the fight against domestic violence at the European level within the framework of the Czech Presidency as well. In the Council of the European Union, we started to negotiate the Draft Framework Decision on combating child sexual exploitation and child pornography and the Draft Framework Decision on combating trafficking in human beings", the Czech Minister of Justice said.
A majority of representatives of the Council of Europe states attending the meeting agreed upon the fact that the need to criminalize domestic violence is unimpugnable. Nevertheless, according to the Norwegian Minister of Justice and Police Knut Storberget, for example, it is still not sufficient: "I recommend to also think about the so-called restorative justice as an alternative. It concerns more the restoration of the damage caused by domestic violence than the penalization of the offender. It particularly concerns the compulsion of the offender to confess and regret his offence and to acknowledge the damage caused to the victim. Meanwhile the victim plays an active role in the process and helps in finding suitable measures which would redress the damage caused by the violent act."
In recent years, the Czech Republic as well implemented several significant changes in its legal order. The need to react to consequences of domestic violence, but not only to them, hereby led to changes of some legal acts in the field of domestic violence prevention. The subject of the new act is e.g. a more efficient preventive protection of persons endangered by domestic violence. In the future, the recodification of criminal procedural law anticipates also an introduction of a preliminary provision thanks to which it will be possible to ban the accused to stay at a shared inhabitance in case of domestic violence and to communicate and contact victims during the entire criminal proceeding. An infringement of these conditions would be considered as a sufficient reason for taking the violent person into custody.
Petra Střítecká, Spokesperson for the Czech EU Presidency
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