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Description
The daily practice of supporting women survivors of domestic violence (DV) & their children in Greece, presents lack of coordination & networking of competent bodies, lack of a common protocol for handling the incidents, deficiencies in professionals’ training etc. For combating DV many systems are involved, which act sequentially, without interconnection & activated only after survivors’ specific actions. This systems’ chain activation negatively affects the response time & quality of the protection/support survivors receive; also leads to great under-reporting of DV because survivors are reluctant to resort to Authorities; but even when they do resort, protection is not guaranteed because if the process fails at a critical or early point of the chain, the entire protection scheme collapses.
The project’s objective is to build a multi-agency substantial partnership between police, justice & support services with the aim to strengthen the support & protection of women & children suffering DV in Greece, in accordance with the standards of the Istanbul Convention & through building on good practices, tools, experience & know-how of the Icelandic Police & other competent authorities & NGOs of Iceland.
Activities
- Identify factors that impede effective support & protection of DV survivors in Greece
- Establishment of an interdisciplinary/intersectoral Greek DV Task Force with representatives of police, justice & support services
- Exchange good practices between Iceland & Greece
- Development, pilot testing & evaluation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) in the involved agencies
- Capacity building of professionals
- Advocacy
Beneficiaries are the women survivors of DV & their children & target groups are the organizations & staff of police, justice & support services.
Coordinator is EAVN, the Icelandic Police is expert partner, The Smile of the Child is expert partner in child protection; competent authorities participate as stakeholders & also external experts.
Summary of project results
According to the Istanbul Convention (Law 4531/2018), frontline professionals working in Agencies and Services of four Sectors (Police, Justice, Specialized and General Support Services) must (Art. 7 & 18) cooperate cross-sectorally in order to provide immediate, qualitative and effective protection and support to women survivors of domestic violence and their children, but also in order to reduce the secondary victimization (from the procedures) that currently suffer these individuals who turn to the competent agencies for protection and support. In order to achieve this goal in Greece, within the framework of the Project #GR_IS_UnitedForDVSurvivors (Greece-Iceland united for women-survivors of domestic violence) a Special Task Force against Domestic Violence was established with the participation of almost all competent Authorities and Agencies, in order to plan and supervise specific actions.
During the said project, the following were designed and implemented:
- Development of a Protocol and necessary tools for the implementation of Cross-sectoral Response to Domestic Violence
- Training of 88 professionals in total
- 19 trainers from the 4 Sectors and Educational Visit of 13 professionals to Iceland
- 56 frontline professionals working in 18 Agencies of all Sectors except for Police
- Pilot implementation and evaluation of the Cross-sectoral Response model at Agios Dimitrios Municipality and Report describing the preconditions for its nationwide application
- Development of informational material for women-survivors of domestic violence and general population: video [https://youtu.be/4LChGQIndhI], trailer [https://youtu.be/8THTaoTlxCw], informational material [https://antiviolence-net.eu/eavn/διατομεακή-ανταπόκριση-στην-ενδοοικ-2]
- Conference (23.10.2023) entitled: "Greece - Iceland united for survivors of domestic violence: Cross-sectoral Response to Prevent and Address Domestic Violence".
The Project was implemented during the period Feb. 2022 - Oct. 2023 within the framework of the Active citizens fund program with Project Promoter being the European Anti-Violence Network (EAVN), Partners being the National Police Commissioner of Iceland and The Smile of the Child and external experts Ms Xeni Dimitriou, Honorary General Prosecutor of the Hellenic Supreme Court, Ms Sofia Bekatorou, Psychologist, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, and Ms Olga Themeli, Professor of Criminal Psychology, University of Crete. The Municipality of Agios Dimitrios participated in all phases of the Project as it was the pilot-Municipality where the Cross-sectoral Response to Domestic Violence model was tested for the first time in Greece. In addition, in different phases of the Project, 8 Authorities and Agencies from the 4 Sectors participated: Department for Combating Domestic Violence of the Hellenic Police Headquarters, General Secretary of Justice and Human Rights of the Ministry of Justice, Court of First Instance of Athens and Prosecutor''s office at Court of First Instance of Athens, Deputy Minister of Labor and the General Secretariat of Demographic and Family Policy and Gender Equality, Research Centre for Gender Equality, General Hospitals of Athens “Korgialeneio-Benakeio, Hellenic Red Cross” and "Alexandra".
The project #GR_IS_UnitedForDVSurvivors aimed to create the necessary procedures and tools and to lobby for the implementation of specific provisions of the Istanbul Convention, which was ratified 5 years ago (N.4531/2018) but still remains unimplemented. Emphasis was placed on the provisions related to improving the protection and support of women and children, victims of domestic violence, in Greece, through building a meaningful partnership between the police, the judicial system, general & specialized support services (governmental & non-governmental), utilizing the good practices, tools, experience and expertise of the Icelandic Police.
In total, the said outputs were produced:
- Development of a Protocol and necessary tools for the implementation of Cross-sectoral Response to Domestic Violence
- Training of 88 professionals in total
- 19 trainers from the 4 Sectors and Educational Visit of 13 professionals to Iceland
- 56 frontline professionals working in 18 Agencies of all Sectors except for Police
- Pilot implementation and evaluation of the Cross-sectoral Response model at Agios Dimitrios Municipality and Report describing the preconditions for its nationwide application
- Development of informational material for women-survivors of domestic violence and general population: video [https://youtu.be/4LChGQIndhI], trailer [https://youtu.be/8THTaoTlxCw], informational material [https://antiviolence-net.eu/eavn/διατομεακή-ανταπόκριση-στην-ενδοοικ-2]
- Conference (23.10.2023) entitled: "Greece - Iceland united for survivors of domestic violence: Cross-sectoral Response to Prevent and Address Domestic Violence".
Professionals working in institutions in three of the four sectors (Police, Justice, Specialised Support Services and General Specialised Support Services) mentioned in the Istanbul Convention received specialised training that meet the requirements set out in Article 15 of the Convention as well as familiarity with the Standard Procedures for Intersectoral Response to Domestic Violence created in the framework of the project. In addition, the group of trainers from all Sectors participating in the Training Visit to Iceland, had the opportunity to see up close and in depth how the best intersectoral response system to domestic violence works.
Institutions, practitioners and policy makers of the four sectors have at their disposal, ready to use, the final products of the project (SOPs & toolkit) and a detailed description of the conditions to achieve universal implementation of the Standardised Intersectoral Response Procedures in the EU, on the basis of which they can, if there is a will, respond to several of the 71 recommendations made by GREVIO during the evaluation of the implementation of the Istanbul Convention in Greece.
Regarding the survivors of domestic violence and their children, during the project and after its completion, 27 people (9 women and 18 minor children) benefited, whose safety is monitored and their support continues to this day by the institutions that participated in the pilot implementation of the Intersectoral Response in the Municipality of Agios Dimitrios.
Summary of bilateral results
The bilateral cooperation was particularly beneficial and productive for the Greek project promoter as it contributed to the exchange of know-how, change of approach and new paradigm to domestic violence issues as well as the training of the members of the Greek NGOs and public organisations that participated in the study trip to Iceland.The excellent cooperation led to another project, under HORIZON funding mechanism, where the National Police Commisioner of Iceland serves as a schientif consultant to the EAVN.