NGOs announce nationwide march to end gender-based violence in Romania

The VIF Network has announced the Together for Women's Safety march, which will take place on October 23 in Bucharest, Cluj, Brasov, Timisoara, Sibiu, Iasi, Giurgiu, Mizil, and Valea Seacă. The event aims to draw attention to the problem of violence against women in Romania.

Under the slogan We're fed up with empty words, we want social services!, the NGOs are calling on the Romanian authorities to fund social assistance services for victims of gender-based violence and to allocate public funds for education, training, and awareness-raising programs (mandatory under Law 217/2003).

Currently, the NGOs consider that victims of domestic and sexual violence do not have enough protection from the state. Specialized social services for victims of gender-based violence are underfunded at both the local and central levels and are not sufficiently prepared to meet victims' needs.

The release states that victims of domestic violence are often left to suffer due to a lack of specialized centers. While every county urgently needs at least one specialized intervention center for victims of sexual violence, at present not even the 10 centers promised on paper are functioning properly.

Where these centers do exist, girls and women are ridiculed or even doubly traumatized by some staff. Lack of training programs, as well as misogynistic, racist, homophobic, or classist mentalities, contribute to the isolation of victims and their return to abusive relationships.

Another issue is that, even when they have a protection order issued against them, perpetrators are not properly monitored by the authorities and continue to commit acts of violence, in some extreme cases going as far as femicide, as the government has not implemented the system of monitoring aggressors with electronic bracelets, which it has repeatedly announced.

And while the public services specializing in gender-based violence are extremely weak, the number of cases of violence reported to the police is increasing year after year. In the first half of 2022, there were over 40,000 cases of domestic violence in which the police intervened, including over 9,400 situations of imminent risk.

Schools and universities lag behind in their duty to prevent and combat situations of abuse, sexual harassment, and bullying. And workplaces are unsafe spaces for women, where sexual harassment and discrimination frequently occur, as does the cover-up of such cases.

Cyberbullying and non-consensual pornography are other forms of violence that more and more people are falling victim to, and the authorities do not have the necessary tools to gather evidence and take action in such situations.