6 Conclusion and Recommendations
Although Azerbaijan has not signed the Istanbul Convention yet, it has made specific commitments to ensure gender equality and combat violence against women, including under the European Convention on Human Rights. Azerbaijan has adopted legislation on measures to combat violence against women and domestic violence, such as the Law on Prevention of Domestic Violence (2011); amendments to the Criminal Code outlawing trafficking in human beings and forced marriage (2011); and amendments to the Civil Procedure Code dealing with protection orders in case of domestic violence (2011).
Even though in Azerbaijan, domestic violence and judicial proceedings relating to domestic violence are provided in the national legislation, as well as international and regional normative instruments, in practice existence of such laws does not automatically ensure their application. The shortcomings of the legislative norms contained in the relevant laws, such as Criminal, Procedure, Civil and Administrative law leave a lot of space for maneuvering for the state authorities.
In practice prosecution for domestic violence is an area that needs a significant improvement. In order to overcome this, it is important to establish a public-private partnership, work with the government and with civil society, professional organizations and media to achieve the change. More importantly, the awareness raising is the only course of action to change the attitudes toward gender-based violence, discrimination and legal prosecution for crimes.
The most important issue that needs to be addressed in the context of domestic violence is the provision of specific mechanisms in the domestic violence legislation. Among them is defining the scope of defense and preventive measures, and identifying the relevant executive authorities to deal with the issue. It is also important to expand the role of the courts in this area of law as current legislation leaves many issues at the discretion of government agencies.
In order to re-examine existing policy documents on gender equality aimed at promoting the advancement of women in social, economic and political spheres, it is important to partner with civil society organizations in developing gender-transformative awareness raising campaigns on fatherhood, healthy relationships, sexual and reproductive health and rights and more.
More initiatives are needed across all elements of domestic violence such as reducing incidence of violence, increasing reporting, establishing multiple crisis centers and shelters for women-victims of domestic violence, especially in the rural and remote areas, ensuring access of women to social services, and improving the capacity of the criminal justice system to prosecute violence against women.
Not less important is to carry out the work on early prevention of violence of all kinds and to build the skills that support non-violent relationships. These activities can be provided through working with both parents, mothers and fathers or comprehensive sexuality education in schools and/or by trained, supported community organizations. The following recommendations are drawn based on the research and interviews conducted with different stakeholders and actors:
- Implementation of the recommendations of the CEDAW Committee (2015) concerning gender stereotypes and violence against women, including criminalizing domestic violence, including assaults with light injuries and increasing penalties for repeated offenders;
- Developing an Action Plan on implementation of the Law on Domestic Violence;
- Singing the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention);
- Amending relevant laws (Criminal Code, Administrative Code, Procedure Code, and the Law on Domestic violence to reflect the changes needed to resolve the issues preventing from advancement of fight against domestic violence;
- Bringing practice and implementation of these laws in compliance with international standards;
- Understanding the importance of restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, pushing gender stereotypes and violence even further. Potentially, the adoption of Istanbul Convention and bringing the national laws in compliance with the Convention will resolve most of these issues.
- Amending the Criminal code to include public prosecution for rape and other forms of sexual violence as well as criminalizing marital rape;
- Ensuring that prosecutors pursue all domestic violence cases, regardless of the level of injury or evidence and that crimes involving domestic violence are not treated less seriously than other crimes;
- Ensuring that incidents of domestic violence are promptly, speedily and effectively investigated and prosecuted;
- Instructing the police to examine the reports on domestic violence with particular diligence, thus taking seriously the cases of domestic violence instead of labeling them as "family affairs" attempting to reconcile the perpetrator with the victim;
- Training the law enforcement to be extra vigilant when recording and taking complaints of rape, in particular, marital rape;
- Strengthening the existing legislation on domestic violence with the provision of multisector medical, psychological, economic and social support services for survivors of domestic violence;
- Providing the victims of domestic violence with protection and safety measures at the earliest rate and taking proactive measures to separate the abusers from the victims;
- Establishing partnerships to ensure that victims of domestic violence are provided with adequate protection, namely with hotline, shelters and financial support, as well as medical and psychological assistance;
- Lifting restrictions on NGO legislation in order to make sure that their activities providing support to women-victims of violence are not hindered by the laws. Subsequently, assisting victims of domestic violence to access services, via adequate funding for NGOs that provide victim support;
- Ensuring that women victims of sexual harassment can have recourse in the legal system through better definitions of what constitutes sexual harassment and the consequences, and subsequently with provision of training to lawyers and judges on this issue.
- Implementing programs, including micro-crediting and capacity building on financial literacy, that empower women and give them access to small business projects in order to provide financial independence to women, especially in the rural areas;
- Considering caregiving of both male and female employees through supporting and encouraging women to take work and build careers and in general promoting women entrepreneurship;
- Building coalitions of civil society, media outlets and international organizations to develop and conduct awareness raising and advocacy campaigns on these issues;
- Building public-private partnerships between the governments, banking sector, private companies, civil society and the international development organizations to join efforts in boosting small entrepreneurship among women both in urban areas, with considerable attention to the urban poor and in the rural areas;
- Focusing such partnerships on promoting awareness campaigns in order to combat stereotypes of predominantly male and female professions and corresponding narrow range of educational choices, and empower women to try their talents in science, technology and business;
- Involving successful businesses run by women as role models for startups, especially in the rural areas, to share good practices and delivering training in establishing and managing businesses, provide life skills training, financial literacy and comprehensive job search assistance;
- Additionally, media and private sector companies can partner in disseminating information about policies and procedures used within private sector companies to advance gender-equal participation and expand equal opportunities for both women and men.