Azerbaijan taking serious women’s rights
By Amina Nazarli
The sixteen-day conference titled “Power to women, progress to the society”, devoted to the active campaign against women’s violence runs in Baku.
Addressing the event, UN Resident Coordinator in Azerbaijan Antonius Broek said the UN is ready to support Azerbaijan in fight against women’s violence.
Speaking about this issue, Broek noted that violence against women has neither political nor religious, and national characteristics.
“Women are subjected to the gender-based and other forms of violence. It is necessary to protect women and prevent the cases of violence around the world. As a result of domestic violence, one woman dies every week,” he said.
The coordinator also underlined the role of Azerbaijani State Committee for Family, Women and Children, which is cooperating with many international organizations on this issue. “Elimination of violence is one of the main objectives. This process should involve all members of society.”
Chairman of the State Committee for Family, Women and Children, Hijran Huseynova, in turn, stressed that the society must unite in the fight against this fact.
She said that prevention of violence against women is one of the important issues of the modern period.
“Today, this global problem concerns Azerbaijani society as well. We hope that improving the welfare of the population, further improvement of national and spiritual values in the family, as well as active propaganda carried out in regions of the country as part of the successful Azerbaijani economic development will lead to a successful solution to this problem,” Huseynova noted.
She also underlined that prevention of violence means strengthening of family institution as well as development of the country. “It is necessary to provide women subjected to violence with psychological, medical and legal assistance. It is also important to reintegrate them into the family and society,” the chairman said.
Huseynova added that lack of awareness among women about their rights paves the way for further problems. “To prevent violence against women it is needed to protect their rights and create equal terms with men,” she stated.
Azerbaijan’s Interior Deputy Minister Oruj Zalov said that during the five-year period there was a decline in the crimes against women in Azerbaijan.
“For the last five years 30,277 crimes against women were reported, 18, 486 out of which were violent crimes,” he noted.
The deputy minister stressed that 18,948 people were prosecuted for committing such crimes. “For the nine months of the year, 4,195 crimes against women were reported, 1,687 of this amount were violent crimes,” he said. “23 percent or one fifth of the crimes was family conflicts.”