Project to battle violence against women to start in January

A two-year national project running between January 2017 and December 2018 will be launched under the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme, focusing on the collaboration and capacity building of various individuals involved in combating violence against women, while raising awareness and encouraging more victims and bystanders to report such incidents.

The project, entitled ‘Full Cooperation: Zero Tolerance’ is aimed at strengthening multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary cooperation, enabling relevant professionals to mitigate, respond to and collaborate on violence against women and gender-based violence effectively, according to the ministry of social dialogue.

The ministry added that the project also aims to upgrade the quality of services and the introduction of national minimum standards by developing and implementing training programmes, a manual of procedures and a set of standard operating procedures that enable cooperation and coordination of professionals from various sectors who come into contact with potential victims.

The project falls under the remit of the ministry for social dialogue, which was awarded €305,651 to implement it. The partners of the project also include the ministry for education and employment, the ministry for health, the ministry for justice, culture and local government, the University of Malta and University of Worcester, the Commission on Domestic Violence, the Foundation for Social Welfare Services and the Malta Police Force.

The application was submitted under the call for proposals for action grants to support national or transnational projects on multi-agency and multi-disciplinary cooperation to respond to violence against women and/or children, and on tackling under-reporting.

MEUSAC assisted the ministry in drawing up the application for this project proposal.