Azernews.Az

By Mushvig Mediyev

While the whole world was getting ready to celebrate International Women's Day, an official report revealed a spike in violence against women in Armenia. As the world marks women as pillars of society, it appears that Armenia is swimming against the trends, preferring to abide by its narrative of violence.

Rather than attempt to develop and promote a thriving, tolerant and all-inclusive society, Armenia has allowed domestic violence to spike out of control, putting the most those delicate souls in harm's way, at such a time when the world came together to hail women for their contribution to society, on March 8th.

Domestic violence cases are on rise in the post-Soviet country. The Women’s Rights Center hot line registered a significant increase in calls last year, underscoring a profound social malaise.

Women faced psychological, physical and sexual assaults considerably more than the previous years in 2014, confirmed the report.

Ahead of the International Women’s Day, psychologist at the WRC non-government organization, Marine Martirosyan said the center received 1,758 calls in 2014, about 1,428 of which were domestic violence cases, and 784 repeat callers.

The center fielded 486 calls of psychological abuse of women by men, especially in rural areas. Some 84 calls were received from outside Yerevan with 63 cases of pure domestic violence in 2014.

Women are tortured, beaten, discriminated and even killed in Armenia, as they are viewed as an inferior part of society showed recent data collected on domestic violence.

Last December, UNICEF Representative in Armenia, Henriette Ahrens said violence against women was an alarming problem in Armenia, where women have been subjected to 1,500 cases of violence in January-August 2014.

Ahrens, on behalf of UNICEF, called on the Armenian society to avoid misdemeanor and to end the violence against females in the country.

Armenia has regressed in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2014, claiming the 103rd place among 142 countries worldwide.

Increasing superiority of men against women in Armenia paves the way for further injustice and discrimination-based violence, notwithstanding the fact that it will generate a social and political fracture.

President of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Anne Brasseur said in her recent interview with Russian RIA Novosti agency that the representation of women in parliament is very low (nearly 10 percent) in Armenia.

While there is a parity of men and women in legislative body in several European countries, including Andorra, the indicator registered in Armenia is abnormally low, said Brasseur.

Based on the lack of effective mechanisms to ensure the proper implementation of legislation, discrimination against women has been rampant in all spheres, including political participation, said the World Bank data last year, revealing that only 11 percent of Armenian legislators in parliament were women. Their participation in the country's political life is not unanimously accepted by people, particularly by men, added the WB.

Meanwhile, the most horrifying side of the domestic violence in Armenia was reflected in a report by the New York-based EurasiaNet.Org, which disclosed murders of five women by their husbands in the first two months of 2014.

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