Tajikistan: Another Year and Still No Domestic Violence Law
Tajikistan: Another Year and Still No Domestic Violence Law
As 2011 comes to a close, Tajikistan has failed yet again to pass a law making domestic violence a specific offence, after many years of lobbying by women’s rights activists.
The bill was drafted by the government’s Committee for Women’s and Family Affairs as long ago as 2003. Five years later, a coordinating council was set up to assist its progress, drawing in all the groups involved in it. IWPR reported on the slow progress of the bill in October 2010.
While the criminal code outlaws physical assault and injury in general, experts say the absence of specific protections and penalties for violence in the home undermines efforts to support victims.
Alla Kuvvatova, head of the Association for Gender Equality and the Prevention of Violence Against Women, says a parliamentary group has continued working on the fine tuning of the bill. She says an official from President Imomali Rahmon’s office made it known that “this bill is going to be passed”.
But other sections of the administration appear slow to take resolute action to move the law forward.
“There’s a law banning domestic violence, but it hasn’t been passed yet. All we have are half-measures that don’t contribute to our country’s development or to the emergence of normal position for men and women,” Kuvvatova said.
The audio programme, in Russian, went out on national radio stations in Tajikistan, as part of IWPR project work funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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