Uzbekistan has been making headway in combatting the issue of gender based violence (GBV) in the country. In 2019 a new law was passed adopting the legal definition of violence against women and girls recognizing domestic violence and harassment against women and children as a crime.
The law entails measures for prevention and protection including introducing restraining orders against offenders and allocating shelters for victims. In order to effectively tackle GBV in the country, the government introduced training programs for police officers, judges and other officials.
A national action plan on gender equality and women empowerment was also launched while establishing a dedicated gender equality commission under the Senate of Oliy Majlis to further promote women’s rights and encourage more women to participate in political and economic decision making. Even though significant progress has been made, Uzbekistan still faces challenges in dealing with GBV. There is a lack of available resources for support services, insufficient data on the prevalence of violence against women and the added issue of societal attitudes that excuse or condone violence against women.
The UNDP released a report stating that in Central Asia women often face violence from partners within their own homes. According to the report, Central Asia saw a rise in domestic violence cases in 2023. In Kazakhstan, annual complaints tripled to 100,000 over a five-year period. Tajikistan received 1,075 GBV complaints in the first half of 2023 amounting to one-third of Tajik women being affected. Uzbekistan issued 21,871 protection orders to women, mostly related to family incidents. Meanwhile, the Kyrgyz Republic reported a 20% increase in domestic violence cases compared to 2022.
Acknowledging the prevalence of domestic violence in the region and discussing the issue of preventing violence against women, Corneliu Eftodi Regional Advisor on Gender Equity UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and Central Asia articulately shared his comments with Daryo at the Asian Women’s Forum 2024 stating:
The rate of domestic violence in the region is alarming and we are aware of that, there has been a joint UN project funded by the EU called Spotlight where the UN agencies supported by the EU have joined forces to combat violence against women and girls in the Central Asian region in particular. This initiative has ended but the positive result of this initiative was working with institutions to revise the legislations and in particular to criminalize what was decriminalized in some of the countries. In terms of legislation, I think there has been good progress so far but we know that for gender-based violence it takes generations to change attitudes and behaviors because changing legislation is absolutely critical but it is not enough. There is people who apply the legislation but there is also people who live their lives daily, so how do we also work on preventing violence against women and girls not only by acting when the cases are there because the services are only touching on the tip of the iceberg, the prevention is the big unknown or the known but hidden and untold stories about women and girls that are facing violence in spaces that should be the safest spaces which are homes, unfortunately this is not the case for many women. There is a lot of work to be done and we are currently working on a continuation on this jointly with other UN entities to work on the attitudes, to work also on women's economic empowerment as the topic of this forum suggests because we know that some of the reasons women are trapped in the in the vicious circle of violence and have difficulties leaving this circle is economic dependency so by building an environment where women can take independent decisions economically will also help them live a life free of violence.
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