5 Challenges and Needs
The issues of gender and violence are regulated by the State Committee on Family Woman Children Affairs of Azerbaijan. Although the activities of the Committee are designed to investigate women's and children's problems in the country and to address existing problems, the work of the committee in this area needs to improve considerably. The Committee fails to respond adequately and promptly to the issue of domestic violence in the country. The Committee often complies with the decisions made by the authorities and law enforcement agencies, instead of pursuing independent policy. Despite the recent rise in media reports about violence against women, the Committee does not react to such reports or investigate already publicized cases of domestic violence. The Committee fails to push for the ratification of Istanbul Convention or produce a consistent work plan for the protection of women's rights.
It is clear that the Committee does not have adequate resources to deal with the extent and complexity of violence against women. The Committee cooperates with the UN institutions, namely with the UNFPA and the Heydar Aliyev Fund to launch support programs for women in vulnerable social groups, refuges and IDP communities. With that in mind, the Committee established 8 Women Resource Centers in districts of Azerbaijan. As part of this cooperation initiative, in 2018 the United Nations (UN) Office in Azerbaijan, together with the State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs, launched the 16 Days Activism campaign to combat violence against women and girls (VAWG).
However, the Committee’s budget is insufficient to fund shelters and its actions are largely limited to awareness raising rather than providing actual services to victims of violence. Women are often referred to NGOs to seek assistance, who in turn do not receive state funds to provide such services.
Even though the Committee partners in development activities addressing gender-based violence with the UNFPA and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in IDP communities, the cooperation does not yield any tangible results.
One of the main problems highlighted by all the interviewed activists is lack of sufficient number of temporary shelters for victims of domestic violence. Few shelters for women victims that are run by civil society groups are mostly used as refuges for victims of trafficking. This is especially important in the rural areas. Women, especially in the regions, have been exposed to violence and are in the dire need of protection from this violence, yet there are no places for them to go. One operational shelter was created by the organization called “Clean world”. Despite the fact that a large number of women are being abused, the shelter is small and cannot accommodate more than 20 women at the same time.
Women also face social and cultural challenges in reporting sexual violence and few programs are in place to sensitize the law enforcement agencies on how to support women who are victims of violence. Not less important factor is that there is no well-known operational hotline for the victims of domestic violence, not just in the capital, but also in the regions.
The situation of women is aggravated by the high rate of unemployment and economic needs of women. Women face even more challenges when they have children and need to find a daycare to be able to work and sustain themselves. There is also a clear need for legal defense and counsel in order to be taken seriously by the law enforcement as most of the time police is on the side of the perpetrator.
The challenges are faced by the activist groups doing everything possible to help the victims of domestic violence. They have difficulties in finding the space to gather their members for a strategic work of protection of women’s rights. The groups are increasingly facing police pressure after the public actions. It also happened after the last rally in support of women’s rights on March 8, 2020. The protest was violently dispersed by the police, those detained were released after questioning. The groups faced similar pressure in October 2019: the protesters were once again violently detained, sustaining physical injuries.
However, it is not just the detention, intimidation or physical violence that activists are facing. The government went as far as organizing hacking attacks against the activists of feminist movement. One of the leaders of the feminist movement, who was in the organizational committee of the protest action, realized, someone was trying to break into her Telegram account. Then her Gmail was hacked and much of her archive including photographs and documents were “downloaded” by the attacker. In less than 48 hours her personal Facebook account was hacked. She was removed from several Facebook groups that focus on LGBTQI and women’s rights in Azerbaijan, where she was an “admin”. Both groups lost thousands of subscribers and content that were shared via the Facebook group page. Two of the Facebook groups targeted are Minority Magazine [Azerbaijan’s first digital magazine focusing on LGBT rights and issues] and Nefes LGBT Alliance Group. As a result of the hacking attack about 300 people lost their social media profiles, two groups were closed down. More importantly, the private group run by the feminist activists was also “hijacked” and soon after the district police started showing up at the doors of the activists, asking questions to the family members, clearly with an aim of intimidating them and spreading the chilling effect to a larger group of those empathetic to the cause.
Already difficult situation for women became even more unbearable under the lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. As in many countries, people in Azerbaijan have been advised or obliged to remain at home, in order to prevent infections or the further spread of the disease. This situation took a toll on women and children who are living with abusive family members and it had been reported in the past few weeks. The number of cases, although increased, remained underreported. Feminist groups registered two cases of appeals whereas the shelter received about 9 requests within one week only. In order to respond to the challenge, the Ombudsman Apparatus held series of video conferences on discussing the fight against domestic violence during the pandemic as part of the campaign “Human Rights Month” to last from 18 May through 18 June, 2020.
Similar to other parts of the world, in Azerbaijan, for many women stay-at-home restrictions meant being locked up with the abuser. Restrictions trapped victims of violence with the perpetrator, limited their opportunities to leave, relocate, make phone calls or ask for help in any other way.
For example, on 4 April 2020 a citizen of Ganja, the second largest city of Azerbaijan, Mahbuba Abbasova was burned by her husband that she attempted to divorce. A 34-year old woman, who was numerously subject to physical violence in the hands of her husband, was placed in hospital, whereas her children were placed with the grandparents. The similar case was reported in connection with a 10-year old child Narmin Guliyeva, a resident of Tovuz, who was allegedly assaulted and killed by a family member. Both of these cases created an outcry in the social media and caused the State Committee on Women, Children and Family Affairs to look into the incidents and follow up with the families of the victims.
Flawed legislation, lack of adequate prevention, protection and response measures, postponed trials had a particularly negative impact on the situation of the survivors, who in fact needed immediate protection and support.
The worsening economic situation also made women more vulnerable and less likely to obtain adequate legal counsel. This part of legal protection could have been partially carried out by NGOs, but they remained restricted by the existing laws.
Economic challenges faced by women, who were previously engaged in the informal sector and lost their income, made them fully dependent on men for financial support, turning them into hostages. Needless to say, that women did not receive any psychological support or childcare during the pandemic, while the domestic work burden increased and the schools were closed down for the period of COVID 19 crisis.