Multisectoral Approach to Prevention of Violence Against Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The baseline report outlines several key findings. Firstly, it found that significant efforts have been made to ensure a multisectoral approach to the protection of victims of domestic violence. The existing legal and institutional framework, although incomplete, provides the possibility of establishing multisectoral cooperation, and can be used as a good basis for further work on its promotion and establishment in local communities where it has not yet been developed. Secondly, non-governmental organizations contributed greatly to the development of multisectoral cooperation, and the best standards of cooperation and intervention have been developed in interactions of women's NGOs that run safe houses and institutions, with the support/involvement of international organizations. What was recognized as a key mechanism for establishing multisectoral cooperation was the signing of a protocol on cooperation or protocol of intervention. This agreement is a good basis for further improvement of the overall intervention on the prevention and suppression of violence against women and domestic violence. The signatories of the majority of protocols that were singed after 2012 have accepted the Istanbul Convention as a legally binding document, and partly applied and respected the standards that this convention prescribes, which is also a good basis for further work. The achieved level of development of multi-sectoral cooperation, analyzed through the content of signed protocols, has many shortcomings that can seriously undermine the rights of victims for assistance and protection. The statistics on the percentage of recidivists in the act of violence (from 50% to 70%), suspended investigations and types of sentences for perpetrators of violence (mostly conditional sentences) indicate that the established cooperation on preventing and combating domestic violence does not provide protection and justice for victims, and insufficiently contributes to the suppression of domestic violence. Monitoring the work of referral mechanisms is one of the methods to improve the effectiveness of multisectoral cooperation on the protection of victims of violence.