The Ministry of Demography, Family, Youth, and Social Policy on Monday presented a HRK 9.9 million project aimed at enhancing prevention and protection from violence against women and domestic violence.

Between 2015 and 2018, 61 women were killed in Croatia, which was 43% of all murders, according to Interior Ministry data.

Forty-nine percent of all murders were committed by close persons and 64% of the victims were women, Demography, Family, Youth and Social Policy Minister Vesna Bedekovic said presenting the project on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Eight women were killed in 2018, five by persons close to them, of whom four were their partners. Eleven women were killed in the first ten months of this year, seven by persons close to them, of whom four were their partners.

Domestic violence was reinstated into the Penal Code in mid-2015 and this crime is on the rise, with 623 cases recorded in 2018 and 895 in the first ten months of this year. Nearly 90% of the victims were women, said Bedekovic.

That is why it is necessary to draw institutions’ and public attention to domestic violence and violence against women, she added.

The project presented today, “Let’s stop violence against women and domestic violence – There’s no excuse for violence”, will last 2.2 years. It envisages the establishment of a round-the-clock hotline for victims and a media campaign to raise public awareness of the damage and unacceptability of such violence as well as of the importance of prevention and of the obligation to report violence.

Bedekovic said Croatia had good legislation but that it was necessary to work together on law enforcement and inter-sector cooperation in order to bolster trust in the system and encourage women to report violence in time.

She added that HRK 70 million had been secured from the European Social Fund to establish safe houses in the six counties that do not have them.

(€1 = HRK 7.4)