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Violence against women: there is no systematic data collection, criticises the Consultative Commission on Human Righs (CCDH).Picture credit: Pexels 

The Commission of Human Rights (Commission Consultative des Droits de l’Homme, a consultative organ, CCDH) has welcomed the fact that the government wants to ratify the 2011 Istanbul convention (Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence), but criticised several aspects.

Among the recommendations is the creation of a free hotline for all victims of violence, more training and information for different actors which deal with victims of violence, a systematic programme on emotional and sexual education in schools, and a debate on the depiction of women in the media.

The CCDH also called on the government to increase funding and means so that victims and their children can receive appropriate support and that the authors of violence can be adequately taken in charge.

However, the CCDH also finds that the draft law is lacking several elements.

Currently, the draft law does not contain a definition of domestic violence, which the CCDH says should include psychological violence. The commission welcomes however the compulsory care of children who are victims of domestic violence. It recommends that there should be a clarification on the criteria when this obligation is fulfilled and what the consequences would be if it wasn’t.

The CCDH also regrets that there is no systematic and detailed statistics on the whole range of violence perpetuated against women and girls, whether it’s genital mutilation, forced marriage, forced sterilisation, or on sexual harassment or obsession, in their public or private lives. Data collection is not done in a systematic and uniform way in Luxembourg.

The courts of Luxembourg and Diekirch have also deplored the lack of an IT database to collect the additional data foreseen by the draft law.  The CCDH also wants more research to be done on this issue in Luxembourg.