Some 15,000 domestic violence victims reach out for help yearly – official

February 7, Pozirk. About 15,000 domestic violence victims ask Belarusian social services for help every year, said Łarysa Belskaja, Belarus’ permanent representative to the UN Office at Geneva.

She told the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women on Thursday that authorities are running a “network of crisis rooms to provide temporary shelter for women and girls affected by domestic violence (105 in 2015 and 134 in 2024).”

Victims may stay in these rooms as long as they want, Belskaja said, according to the foreign ministry.

She added that in the first half of 2024, “about 108 people who suffered from domestic violence lived there, 81 women and 27 men.”

Earlier, civil society organizations submitted an alternative report on women in Belarus to the committee, highlighting continued discrimination.

The country has no law to address domestic violence after Alaksandar Łukašenka in 2018 dismissed legislation drafted by authorities in cooperation with civic society groups as “nonsense copied primarily from the West.”

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